Speaker: Dr. Susan Weinschenk, Weinschenk Consulting
Notes by: DeeDee DeMulling
There have been major shifts over the past 25 years. 25 years ago only a handful of outside consultants were practicing in the Human Factors in computing field. The military was the birthplace of improving human-machine interaction, and then large corporations began to perceive the value of usability and employed research scientists.
The Usability Engineers at that time were deemed to have special knowledge, training and PhD's to back them up. They happily propagated that perception and everyone knew each other.
The usability engineers were beginning to realize that there was a whole lot of work to do and not enough people to do it. They began training programmers to be screen designers, since many mainframe developers were transitioning to GUI products. But the developers had such conflicting requirements on their time, that the resulting design left users dissatisfied with the results. What was needed was to train an army of interface designers who can worry about the UI/Usability and had a passion for the work. For the past decade, masses have been trained, methodologies have been created, and usability is recognized in many technology organizations.
The recession has had an impact on the field, on the IT sector, and on the business sector. The consultants' rank has shrunk with many consultants accepting inside jobs. Projects and job openings are on hold. Technology promised increased productivity, but technology didn't save companies from this recession.
Companies are restructuring their organizations. New project leaders are taking over and many new faces are now responsible for the purse strings. Business managers are beginning to inherit more power than technology and have more decision-making and budgeting authority than ever before.
The good news is that business managers are very interested in Usability and excited about what we can bring to the team. Business managers understand the philosophy and value of usability. Are we going to finally be able to "Cross the Chasm"? (Checkout Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore)
The old adage, "Know thy Audience" is important because as the power that be shifts, so do our audience. What do they know? What do they care about? What do they need from us? We need to be prepared to start at the beginning again. We need to educate this audience and be educated by them. We have to be prepared to go back to basics. We can't start talking about the methodology; instead we just need to state that we follow a methodology. ('Nuff said)
How we present and package our service offerings needs to be sensitive to what the business managers are looking for. What are their objectives and how are we going to help them meet their objectives? We need to learn how we can best facilitate usability in this new world order.
USABILITY ENGINEER ROLE
The successful usability engineer will still be helping to improve the usability of the products that companies produce. The usability engineer will remain flexible and choose items from their bag of tricks that best matches the situation. The generalist will find more success than the specialist.
The usability engineer may not be just the UI/Usability person on the team, because the business managers are looking to us to bridge the gap between technology and business. Our analysis and management skills will be called in to play on the business run technology projects.
More consultants will be filling these roles as business managers go outside their IT organizations to find the person with this skill set. Companies are going to want to run lean for a while and will not be increasing headcount too soon. Income will hold steady. The usability engineers that can stretch and grow into these roles will have personal success and the products we support will be better for it.
The enthusiasm we have for what we do will spill over into the project team. If you have a passion for improving the usability of products, the business leaders will continue to be asking for your help. Stay focused on the goal of usability, while remaining flexible in the services and skills that you develop to continue your career in usability.