SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: Who is the Usability Specia
RE: SIGIA-L: Who is the Usability Specialist?
From: Jess McMullin (jess_at_cognissa.com)
Date: Wed Apr 18 2001 - 17:15:44 EDT
Sean wrote:
"Adam Smith must be saying that there is no need for a Usability
Specialist team member because that role is fulfilled by many persons
not involved with the actual building of the product or site. "
referring to this article on hcirn
http://www.hcirn.com/reflect/whyhard.html
That's totally *not* what Adam is saying. He's saying that you shouldn't
test your own designs, that the usability person is there to validate (or
not) the design through empirical measures (expert review and usability
testing) and that usability people aren't designers. Usability people are
involved in the site development process, it just means that the person who
does user research, creates site architecture, does prototypes & wireframes
and then usability tests is stretched waaaay too thin.
As has been noted before, it's a split between research & design, and there
needs to be a separation between design and validation to really reap the
benefits of the user-centered process. Otherwise your validation is
compromised, and you can't really say if a site really works for users, or
not. It's just too hard to be objective about your own stuff.
cheers,
Jess
-------------------------
Jess McMullin
Usability Analyst
Cognissa
780-903-4544
jess_at_cognissa.com
www.cognissa.com
-------------------------
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