What happens when the usability of a system is bad, can the overall (user) experience of the system save the day?
How important really is usability to the big picture.
During a recent project I had the opportunity to observe (in an ethnographic capacity) people using a system that had an unending list of shortcomings.
In fact I still haven’t really found anything the system did well. Yes it was a UX horror story.
The people using the system where amazing, they had taken this poorly designed and contrived system and turned it into a workable, functioning, and productive series of procedures and sometimes supplementary systems.
Look around the web, you’ll find them all over the place. MS-Word and PDF forms that you have to download and complete. I would be forgiven for thinking that we have not progressed on the web since 1995.
I know I’m not perfect I have been party to this crime against UX as well.
We know they are bad, so why are we still using them.
Let’s Consider
You’re feel inspired to join a professional association. The website seems pretty good, it lists all the benefits. There is a professional air about it. You can see that some of your respected peers are already members.
Tagged: cms, forms, frameworks, MS-Word, p-52, p52, PDF, project-52, usability, user experience, ux
I was talking to the local UPA Perth chapter (in formation) about aspects of UX visualisation. It was an interesting topic that brought up a good number of discussion points.
One point was on the design process. The way we design. The way that we just don’t allow ourselves time to fail at the design. Or if we do, it is hidden in the back room so we can appear to be “magical design wizards” that produce the perfect product, interface design, IA or the like.
Tagged: clients, design, process, project-52, protosketching, prototyping, sketching, user experience, user interface, ux, ux-design
I have been involved with many user surveys over the years. Some have gone well. Some have been a complete waste of time and effort. The main distinction between them is the surveys that were professionally developed and pretested would succeed. The ones that had been knocked together by a well meaning manager were often destined to failure.
It comes down to this – unless you have experience designing surveys, then it’s best to either hire someone who has had experience and training, or find another way to collect the same information.
