January 9, 2003
Dealing with Challenges of Practicing Usability: Dr. Susan Dray
of Dray & Associates
Lyle Kantrovich presided over meeting in Debbie McConnell's absence.
The meeting was held at the Rice Street Library in St.Paul.
Dr. Susan Dray
of Dray and Associates presented "Dealing with Challenges of Practicing
Usability." Approximately
30+ people attended with a large representation from the STC SIG on Usability
joining us.
Dr. Dray presented 10 Familiar Usability Challenges starting with
- User Centered Design must start from the beginning of the design.
- Separating usability from design my end up with a long list of problems
rather than a list of solutions.
- Some data is better than no data.
- Usability done late can still be useful.
- Sometimes people need an "eye-opening" experience in order
to adopt User-Centered Design.
- "Doing" User-Centered Design and "Selling" User-Centered
Design require different skill sets and both are important.
- A lot of design issues are really organizational issues in the design
team.
- Allies (such as Marketing) may see usability as their turf.
- Let the big vision guide User-Centered Design but not control it.
- It's a constant battle.
Dr. Dray talked about her personal experiences both positive and negative
in working with HP, Microsoft, and other clients throughout her career.
For more details, Dr. Dray's presentation is available in a PDF file on the upamn.org
website.
Chapter Business
- Members are reminded to get dues in – One year membership in our local
chapter is $20.00
- Several job openings were mentioned. See the website for details.
- Members are invited to join the website design team to redesign the UPA
website based on User-Centered Design. Contact Lyle or Bill Tyler to join
(email address available on the UPA website.)
- Dr. Dray asked all attending tonight to go to www.chiplace.org and vote
for a tutorial. The Chi conference needs at least 100 votes and 25 registrants
to include a tutorial in the conference.