Written by Dick CarlsonIn a perfect world, we’d all create software and websites and knowledgebases and blogs and videos and e-learning and such that would be posted and then never be opened up to the most evil and destructive beings on the planet.
Users.
Our work would shine brightly, with buttons and links perfectly aligned, un-clicked and never seen, so that we’d never have to hear those annoying whining noises. “I can’t make it do this” and “It won’t do that” and “It doesn’t have any of those” keep echoing in our heads at night, as we try to sleep. Don’t they know that we’ve created perfection?
Users!
You can’t live with ‘em. And you can’t kill ‘em, chop ‘em up, wrap ‘em in paper, and UPS ‘em to random people from your phone directory. (At least according to last week’s version of “CSI: New York” you can’t.)
So what’s a poor coder to do?
You might think about doing a little usability testing. It’s not really that hard, and if you integrate it from the beginning of your project it can really improve the final product. The problem is that you (and your little Red Bull drinking buddies) really aren’t the target users. You know too much about whatever it is that your software does. So you’ll need to buy a couple of pizzas for a user group, show them some mock-ups, and then SHUT THE HELL UP as they try to complete some simple activities.
Video tape the action, and then bring it back to deconstruct. Work a little further, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Don’t know how to do a simple UI review? Point your mousie over to http://www.useit.com and listen to Jakob Nielsen, the God of web design. Do what he says.
Or hire an expert. There are lots of good people available to hold your hand and make sure what you’re developing actually works for the poor fools who give you money.
Then you can buy more Red Bull, games, and a membership on Match.com. Maybe even move out of Mom’s basement.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The unwritten law: it takes 3 times for a developer to ‘get’ that there’s a usability problem. The 1st time, “it’s a stupid user”, 2nd time “it’s a coincidence”, 3rd time “oh”. I used to cite the handcuff/gag rule, developers have to be handcuffed and gagged while they watch users at the interface. If they can go “just do this” and/or do it for them, you’ll never see the problem.
‘Zactly. At Microsoft, we used to lock the product group people in another room, and let them watch through one-way glass. The people running the UI test had no idea how to fix things or make stuff work.
Sometimes we were laughing so hard they could hear us.
Uh, maybe the developers could listen to the QA and testers once in a while. Just sayin’.
One problem with doing UI testing on your own is that lots of times the users don’t know what they want either, or they say what they think they should say and then you’re right back to “idiot users, what do they know?”
I wish I’d seen this before a sewing forum I *used to be* heavily involved with changed platforms. They went from a vibrant vBulletin-type platform with hundreds of very active users and 10+years of searchable archives to Drupal!
Zero consideration taken for the fact that their users were mostly (not all, but heavily) “older women, with minimum tech skills and little interest in developing more of same”. We were there to talk about sewing projects, and life and stuff, NOT “develop your own forum software”!!