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Stew Dean | 1 Jun 2004 13:20

Re: [Sigia-l] User Test Cost - Does this sound reasonable?

At 02:45 30/05/2004, Pabini Gabriel-Petit wrote:
>This discussion has moved on since I last had time to contribute, so I'll be
>brief.
>
>BJ Cook wrote:
> > > Our IT manager doesn't believe in usability and testing, he believes in
>blind
> > > deployment of his software and apps.
>
>Todd R.Warfel responded:
>That can usually be resolved by either having the person observing some
> > actual usability testing (behind the mirror or in another room via
>closed circuit TV - you don't want the participant hearing the IT
>manager yelling how stupid they are for not being able to figure out
>his software)
> > If they're not available for that, then showing them video vignettes
> > will typically help.
>
>[PGP] You're making a big assumption here, Todd. Where management isn't
>friendly toward user-centered design, it's sometimes impossible to get a
>budget for any usability testing. Such companies certainly don't have
>usability labs with 2-way mirrors or closed-circuit TV.
>
>And if that doesn't work, then putting some actual
> > dollar figures on the costs associated with poor usability will
> > typically do the trick - since managers traditionally deal with
> > budgets, playing the numbers game is a way to break into their sense of
> > reason.
>
>[PGP] Any suggestions for where to get this data?
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Marc Rettig | 1 Jun 2004 16:05
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Re: [Sigia-l] User Test Cost - Does this sound reasonable?

> I'd be interested to find out if other people have tried alternatives to
> writing reports, especially for distributed teams? What success have you
> had and what obstacles have you encountered?

A couple of things come to mind.

The first is....
For a series of tests that stretched over 18 months for the same team, I wrote
reports, but we built a little "weave the results into the process" work around
that activity.

1. The day after the test, the core team (myself as facilitator, lead IA, lead
tech, lead graphic designer) went through all of our notes and made a sticky note
for each observation. By the end of the day, there would be hundreds of notes on
the wall. We would do a rough clustering, and agree on a very small number of
things that we could all agree definitely needed attention. This was a)
exhausting, b) tedious, and c) kind of fun.

2. I went off and refined the clusters, then wrote a report which was organized
around the clusters. As it happened, the clusters often mapped either to pages or
transactions, but sometimes they were more general. For example, we had insights
about the use of photographs that had implications for the whole site.

The report was structured as a set of insights and implications. The insights
presented the observations from the test, giving the team ammunition should they
need to justify their priorities to stakeholders. The implications were messages
to the team about what needed attention, based on the teams' sticky-note
conversations and my own recommendations. There were *no* solutions in this
document.
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Listera | 1 Jun 2004 20:33
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[Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Hyperbole? Alarmist? Spot on? Likely to change how you'll be designing your
apps/sites in a few years?

Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite
<http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=174156&seqNum=6>

Make no mistake: Microsoft really hates the web. The new browser war may
appear to be about the emergence of Mozilla and friends with their polished
eye-candy interfaces, but it's really about Microsoft versus the W3C.
Internet Explorer is Microsoft's blocking tactic‹never to be properly
web-compliant, never to give the W3C a day in the sun‹and Longhorn
technology is the big-stick alternative being built. One of the purposes of
Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it.

The web is used to provide a variety of services and communities. Part of
the Longhorn strategy is to extract from the web all of the services with
any profit model at all: web magazines, auction sites, news, online
retailers, and so on. When Microsoft tempts these organizations and
communities to Longhorn, the web suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Over
here will be the standards-based web, with a gradually shrinking set of web
sites. Over there will be the future Longhorn-based proprietary global
infrastructure‹a global version of the early Novell NetWare, a sort of stock
market/CNN fusion for content delivery. For Microsoft, the best possible
outcome is for the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a
few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few others
will want to go there; so every day there will be fewer traditional
websites, every day less relevance.

----
Ziya
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Dave Collins | 1 Jun 2004 21:02

RE: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

So, in a nutshell:

a grassroots world community has found something truly useful, inclusive
and free, and a large corporation has come along and is attempting to
corner it, brand it and charge a subscription fee.

Sounds about par for the course.

Dave Collins
User Interface Design
Phoenix Interactive
300 Wellington Street
London ON, N6B 3P2
V: 519.679.2913 x292
F: 519.679.6773
E: dcollins <at> phoenix-interactive.com

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin <at> asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin <at> asis.org] On Behalf
Of Listera
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 2:33 PM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Hyperbole? Alarmist? Spot on? Likely to change how you'll be designing
your
apps/sites in a few years?

Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite
<http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=174156&seqNum=6>
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Listera | 1 Jun 2004 21:04
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Re: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Dave Collins:

> a grassroots world community has found something truly useful, inclusive
> and free, and a large corporation has come along and is attempting to
> corner it, brand it and charge a subscription fee.

With one caveat: that "something" is used by about half a billion people,
generates billions in revenue for many and is one of the most significant
techno-cultural phenomena of the last century or so. :-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba 

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Dave Collins | 1 Jun 2004 21:14

RE: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Or even more wry:

"... the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a
few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few
others
will want to go there..."

In other words, right back to its roots. ;D

Dave Collins
User Interface Design
Phoenix Interactive
300 Wellington Street
London ON, N6B 3P2
V: 519.679.2913 x292
F: 519.679.6773
E: dcollins <at> phoenix-interactive.com

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin <at> asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin <at> asis.org] On Behalf
Of Listera
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 2:33 PM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Hyperbole? Alarmist? Spot on? Likely to change how you'll be designing
your
apps/sites in a few years?

Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite
(Continue reading)

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Dave | 1 Jun 2004 21:15
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Re: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 15:02:43 -0400, Dave Collins
<dcollins <at> phoenix-interactive.com> wrote:
> 
> So, in a nutshell:
> 
> a grassroots world community has found something truly useful, inclusive
> and free, and a large corporation has come along and is attempting to
> corner it, brand it and charge a subscription fee.

hmm? While I buy the socio-economic ramifications to Longhorn, what I
don't buy is the utopian metaphor for Mozilla. People believe that OSS
is just as capital earning as closed software, but that its open
nature means that monopolozation is less likely and thus opportunities
are increased.

That being said, I think there is another issue here. <sticking head
out of shell slowly>What if, IF!, Longhorn is all that and it brings
to market what any OSS couldn't imagine doing in the same timeframe at
the same level of support and professionalism?
What if, the web is ready to die as we know it and it is time for a
new technology to come along and better it? No one is really morning
the death of Gopher, eh?

Its been a while since I argued this, but isn't the network (the
Internet) more akin to NTSB and less akin to a software license any
more? I mean imagine if every TV maker used different protocols for
interpretting TV signals? It would be a mess, no? I mean aren't we
reaching a point where we just gotta let the better app/solution win?
I'm sorry but would we be all high and mighty if Beta won over VHS as
it really should have?
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Dave | 1 Jun 2004 21:19
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Re: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

I'm sorry the roots of the success of the web is in ...
Amazon, eBay, & Yahoo

these are big market capitalized corporations doing their best to make
lots and lots of money.

The web is no longer a grassroots anything. Its big HUGE money and
thank goodness otherwise we would all be otu of jobs. ;)

-- dave

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 15:14:31 -0400, Dave Collins
<dcollins <at> phoenix-interactive.com> wrote:
> 
> Or even more wry:
> 
> "... the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a
> few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few
> others
> will want to go there..."
> 
> In other words, right back to its roots. ;D
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Listera | 1 Jun 2004 21:14
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Re: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

Dave Collins:

> "... the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a few idealistic
> hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few others will want to go
> there..."
> 
> In other words, right back to its roots. ;D

Yes and the next time you design something standards-compliant don't you
forget that MS thinks you're an "idle pervert".

Ziya
Nullius in Verba 

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Dave Collins | 1 Jun 2004 21:23

RE: [Sigia-l] The future of WWW...


>That being said, I think there is another issue here. <sticking head
out of shell slowly>What if, IF!, Longhorn is all that and it brings
to market what any OSS couldn't imagine doing in the same timeframe at
the same level of support and professionalism?
What if, the web is ready to die as we know it and it is time for a
new technology to come along and better it? No one is really morning
the death of Gopher, eh?

>Its been a while since I argued this, but isn't the network (the
Internet) more akin to NTSB and less akin to a software license any
more? I mean imagine if every TV maker used different protocols for
interpretting TV signals? It would be a mess, no? I mean aren't we
reaching a point where we just gotta let the better app/solution win?
I'm sorry but would we be all high and mighty if Beta won over VHS as
it really should have?

There are those who can better argue this than I but...

Using your analogy to video tape recorders, isn't the concept of
Longhorn driving the structure of the Web the equivalent of a 'Microsoft
Remote Controller' driving the design of the 'Video Tape Recorders'?

Dave (C)

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Gmane