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Dividing Usability into Two Disciplines
By Michael Korn

September column
October column

This new column is written by members of the San Diego chapter of CHI (Computer Human Interactions). Click here to learn about SandCHI.

Author Michael Korn [see bio] is a senior user interface designer at AOL.

He was SandCHI's inaugural chapter chair and founder, and he currently serves as program chair.

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Michael and two others from SandCHI were guest speakers for the October chapter meeting. Click here to read the informative summary of their presentation on usability.

Usability is in danger of becoming less relevant by becoming a bottleneck in industry's most frequently used design and development processes. Usability professionals need to start getting their hands dirty in the business of UI design, and refrain from applying theoretical usability standards too rigidly in the design of new products.

At the same time, usability may become less relevant if it doesn't satisfactorily differentiate itself from standard marketing practices. If usability professionals don't continue to develop more accurate and repeatable data collection and analysis techniques and tools, the value and need for usability services will become indistinguishable from those of the far more established and proven profession of marketing.

As a result, I think the industry must divide itself into two fairly independent disciplines: those serving the practical application and those serving the research-based goals of product design.

Usability Without a Process

George Olsen's "Interactions" article outlined an uncomfortable paradox that has emerged in the technology industry. Usable products are being designed without the help of a usability process. How do I know? Recent research supports the claim that companies that have a dedicated usability professional do not produce significantly more usable products.

While these research findings need to be replicated, the conclusion is provocative if not definitive. Does the presence of a usability professional provide no value, as a surface interpretation of these conclusions might imply? I don't think so. It is more likely that the presence of a usability person motivates many of the other professionals on the team to make a couple of incorrect assumptions:

1) Usability professionals deserve deference.
2) The rest of the team gets absolution.

Usability professionals do not have a monopoly on knowledge of what makes a product usable. Marketing and engineering personnel apply similar principles to their work in order to ensure greater usability. Second, a usability presence as such can imply to others that they are freed from the responsibility of keeping the target users in mind. This assumption is incorrect. It invariably results in the usability group becoming a bottleneck in the design and development process, and decreasing the value proposition of incorporating usability in the process.

The presence of usability is not ineffective. But the possibility of usability processes being more problematic than beneficial to the product development cycle is an important issue that interested professionals should address. How is it that usable products are being created without a formal usability process?

Elizabeth Buie said in response to Olsen's article referenced above: "Those who achieve usable designs without a usability process are very good designers who bring a breadth of knowledge to their work. Usability must stop ignoring the wider context."

Working Model for Applied Usability

If the above statement is correct, then we can conceptualize a working model for an applied usability role. Can usability be a primary responsibility for one or two people on the team, and a secondary responsibility for the rest? Sure. Why not? Folks with titles such as User Interface Designer, Information Architect, and Product Designer are designing usable products all over the country.

Designers can and should effect fundamental change in the design of products. But the way that they do it is in a less scientific, more collaborative fashion. Good communication, cross-functional integration, and effective design can and does result in usable designs, even if there's no usability specialist on staff.

Are these nonusability professionals traitors to the cause of pure usability and user-centered design? Judging from technology products of the past, it's easy to see how this highly skeptical and possibly paranoid belief gained popularity. There are a lot of products out there that have been designed with no consideration of the target user base, other than for their purchasing habits. Many of these products of the past were engineered efficiently, the common users be damned.

I work with lots of engineers that are candid with me because we work on different projects. We engage in usability talk all the time. I hope you're seated for this one... Sometimes I even overhear usability talk between engineers. To a substantial degree, times have changed. As long as usability research and engineering continues to provide professionals with better tools and process, I'd say that applied usability is good.

So usability must manifest itself through design. Without design, usability is strictly academic. This brings me to the second specialty that should thrive within the usability community.

Science of Usability

Strictly academic usability is horribly underserved. "What! You just said that usability can't be so insular, that usability must integrate and hear input from all other professional domains, etc." In addition to the practical application of usability and design, there needs to be a well-funded usability discipline grounded in the behavioral sciences.

Without rigorous science, usability will suffer many of the pains that marketing groups have suffered for decades. Among the consequences of not applying sound "before the fact" methodological procedures are:

• A small group becomes indoctrinated to believe in the subjective opinion of a powerful leader...this is known as "groupthink."
  
  
• Overdependence on "after the fact" statistical analysis, otherwise known as "datasnooping."
  
  
• Questionable data regarding group behavior is interpreted as valid measurement of behavior that occurs in isolation.

Usability professionals have been walking the tightrope between art and science, and qualitative and quantitative science for too long. Usability professionals need to cultivate two usability specialties. The first is dedicated to the subjective nature of product rendering and design. The second specialty needs to optimize the usability process, incorporating rigorous scientific principles into the research and development of better interactive products.

I'd be interested in your opinions, comments or work experiences related to this article. Please forward comments to michaelkorn2000@aol.com.