Art and science of usability analysis

Chris Rockwell is president of Lextant, a company specializing in user research and interactive system design. Test Center Lead Analyst Jon Udell asked Rockwell to comment on the art and science of usability analysis and on the impact of new tools such as Morae and VisualMark.

IW: How can portable video enhance the analysis of user experience?

CR: You can describe your office environment to me, and you can describe your interactions with an application, but if I’m sitting in your office with you, we can have a much richer conversation. I can see your facial expressions. I can see the Post-it Notes you’ve tacked up on the wall. I can see all sorts of context that’s important for me as a designer of an interactive system. Portable lab solutions allow you to nimbly transport this observing capability into the user’s environment.

IW: Where does user research belong in the software life cycle?

CR: If you’re trying to understand early on what features the software should include, then you may want to explore their existing environment. We call that generative research. But if the question is, Can people complete typical tasks? or Do they make certain kinds of errors? then after-the-fact usability testing is effective. We call that evaluative research.

IW: How would you advise enterprise developers to make the best use of this new breed of capture and analysis tools?

CR: People put lots of effort into alpha and beta programs but then don’t capture much experiential data. That’s a huge opportunity. In the same way that you wouldn’t write mountains of code without a code review, you shouldn’t do lots of interface work without some sort of review cycle with users. Of course you want to communicate with your target audience in an unbiased way, get feedback early and often, and use objective measures (how many times did they click in the wrong place?) as well as subjective measures (how do you feel about that experience?). And there are basic principles: Are we giving appropriate feedback? Is there a single clear focus on the page? Given a basic understanding of these principles, the tools can help developers whenever in the cycle it’s appropriate. I don’t think it’s rocket science. I’ve studied a lot of human psychology and industrial engineering and human factors, but sometimes the best thing to do is to just watch somebody trying to use the software.