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.
To often we see focus groups being used as the core evaluation and research tool within a web design project. Why!?
Focus groups are in the main used to evaluate and get recommendations from customers on the proof of concepts or prototypes. They have a strength in gathering people’s judgements, emotions and possible interactive scenarios from the group as a whole.
If you don’t know I have no love for focus groups, I have yet to see them produce any results that have not been tainted or saturated in biases. To the extent that they were just unusable. With the research or evaluation having to be conducted by some other technique later on in the project. Often at an extra expense.
There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment, within developmental circles to just add a few wireframes and develop a prototype or two, and then you can declare you are across the user experience design process.
The thing is User Experience is a lot more than just a few simple techniques, it’s an entire collaborative design process, in a way it’s not just a single methodology at all.
This lack of being a single methodology may be part of the issue.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, HTML prototypes, run workshops on UX design, do user research and conduct usability & accessibility testing and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc or just email me.
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