The Art of Usability

How do you tell someone that their product sucks and it will take weeks to make the product usable including a redesign of many aspects the they know and love. And its not just showing and proving something is wrong, also telling them how to fix it.

This is the hardest part of my job.

Engineers, Programmers, Designers... I love you all, I respect and even try to emulate some of your work. And I can even respect your love for your product. I know I would feel the same way. But my job now... is to try to make it better for everyone, trying to find the problems that you don't always see. And while work leads to a lot of subjective and qualitative results I take it every bit as seriously as you do your products.

So how do you do it? Obviously I could try to speak their language... math, stats and hard facts... Sure, that makes the study longer, more expensive and much more involved. Then I come out with stats and facts... but at the end of the day I still have to make the recommendation on how to change it. Not to mention the fact that chances are they know how to bend stats better than I can. So what I've found that works well so far ... is giving the positive first... build them up, make them feel good... then work on tearing them down and making them feel small... but end on a positive note or they won't make the changes and they will never read the report.

I've had my ups and downs with this part of the job. And it always feels like I'm preparing to go into the fire when I'm into the analysis and report writing. Just waiting for them to shoot the messenger. Some people get it more than others they understand what I'm trying to do, but ... there there are the people that think I will magically fix the product and that the testing is all they will ever have to do to have a wonderful product. Anyways, thats all I have to say about that.

Also, My dog Bailey is very sick and not eating. I'm worried and really sad. She's getting pretty old and now isn't responding to the medication. She will probably get her own blog post soon.