Selling Usability: Learning from the Healthcare Industry

I got into the usability field because I love visual design, interaction design, and the cerebral nature of the UX design world. But these days, I spend a fair bit of my time thinking about how to promote a culture of usability within our organization.

The question I often ask myself is this: How do you move a person, group or organization from zero awareness of a discipline, to a culture that lives and breathes a user centered approach?

Recently, I was challenged to engage with a business division to help them implement a change management and communication program. I was added to the implementation team primarily because of my background in communication, i.e. the advertising and design world.

When I set out, my goal was this - find out everything I could about Change Management in a short period of time. Turns out, the health care, psychology, and business worlds have been at this - for a long time. While I was digging around - I found a few resources with strong parallels to the process of evangelizing usability.

The most impactful resource I found was the Transtheoretical Model of Change, sometimes known as the Stages of Change Model from Prochaska and DiClemente. This article from the American Academy of Family Physicians is a great illustration. Family physicians are constantly challenged to help people change behaviors - and they have to be really good at getting people to want to change - all on their own. Or they just aren't effective.

This article talks quite a bit about taking different approaches for people in different stages of change. For example, their research showed that constant education, and communication of benefits is sometimes not enough to get people on your side. Parallel: Maybe we need a new approach - and just telling people how great UX is, and how great it will make their lives, is not enough. Read the article if you have a chance. It's written for family Physicians, but reads like a satirical guide to selling UX.

Week 2 Reaction Post

I have created my own blog so that I can share my class assignments with the class. It is named Geri Interaction Design.

New Blog Layout & Article of Interest

When I was meeting with Stephen Gilbert today, we were discussing how the posts have been very high quality so far (we've been enjoying reading them); however, it was rightly pointed out that the blog could use better tie-in with Iowa State's HCI program. I have borrowed the program's banner and renamed the blog to connect it to Iowa State. Thus, posts in this blog are not only helping to market your own skills and knowledge in HCI but also market Iowa State's HCI program as a whole.

On to the more interesting reason to blog... Even though HCI is an interdisciplinary I often run into people studying in the field, regardless of background, who do not want to learn one of the knowledge sets critical to being a leader in the discipline. Whether it is a programmer not wanting to learn the psychological concepts involved in evaluating an interface, a designer not wanting to learn how to program, or a social scientist not wanting to learn the basics of design. While I think it is wrong to assume that any people will become an expert in all areas that make up HCI, I think at least a good understanding in each area is critical for one to learn and develop as both an academic and professional in the field. Part of my motivation behind the way I teach and have developed HCI 596 is that I see it as a class where students can develop (in a low risk environment) the skills and basic knowledge of an area they are less comfortable with while also creating portfolio material that shows off their core talents. For more on the blending of skills in HCI, see the article that inspired me posting about this today as it offers a nice point and counter point for building a generalist toolbox (it pays better, there are more jobs out there, but the counter point is that often companies expect more than they should without offering up the extra compensation).

Social Features?

I found this link while doing research for my Craigslist redesign project: http://uxmovement.com/resources/poll-results-users-want-speed-over-social-features/

The survey was said to have found that speed of loading (Visibility of system status), simple design (Aesthetic and minimalist design), fewer clicks (Flexibility and efficiency of use) and a preference for text searching and intuitive navigation (User control and freedom & Consistency and standards) were important traits in web applications. This said, I think we've all heard that before in Nielsen's Heuristics and Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design".

Social Features, like a Tweet or Facebook "Like" button, seem to take the backseat to the basic usability of the site, which once typed out, seems to be common sense. To me, Social Features are just the modern version of the web Stat Counter - popular circa 1993 (and hopefully gone the way of everyone having angelfire websites). Everyone wants them on their site with the assumption that they will drive more traffic or interest - not to say, this doesn't happen or isn't at least somewhat effective for sharing information.

While an interesting article, the first thing that strikes me is how poorly the visual design of the pie chart is, specifically on a UX topic website. The use of color for the pie slices is the first thing that sticks out as a terrible mistake – the range of colors are too close to be readable and the legend perhaps would have been better as tailed text boxes pointing to each section. Secondly, the chart may have served better as a bar graph enabling the user to read the information quickly.

The Value of Expert Users

Usability testing is a part of the agile process where I work. Though I find that more testing is better, doing three rounds of testing, usually with about three people in each round, is part of our general policy for building a product. The number of tests is the same whether for a new product or the redesign of an existing product, but the type of users may be different with each. When doing a redesign, it is often easy to find users of different levels that can give valuable input. Expert users are brought into the process very early in focus groups and brainstorm sessions. A low fidelity prototype is presented to these experienced users in order to flesh out more "use cases" or user needs. Expert users are the ones that can tell you what they really loathe, day in and day out and what takes them the most time. These are opportunities for big wins, especially if the product is heavily used internally. These wins save the company money directly and give the employees a higher level of job satisfaction. This is not hands-on testing, yet, however, but merely a way to get back to the drawing board with a better understanding of the product. Product managers may have expertise on a product that the designer probably doesn't without doing loads of discovery.

The first round of usability testing begins after the low fidelity prototype has been embellished to include all the new use cases discovered in the focus groups and brainstorming sessions. I use Flashbuilder to build the prototypes which I label as "medium" fidelity since I see a high fidelity prototype as one that has real code and data behind it. My medium fidelity prototypes are clickable with static data and generally no visual design. Expert users are great for the first round of usability testing, or prototype testing as I tend to call it. Expert users can give you specific usability information but also a higher level of confidence that the IA has been done well and that the interface is actually an improvement over the current product. I tend to do most major changes between and after the first 4 or 5 tests with knowledgeable users. Expert users also tend to get the greatest satisfaction out of helping build a new product. They are really the ones that know the product and including them in the process just builds interdepartmental cohesion. Experts may not expose all your usability problems and heuristic neglect, but they will definitely set you in the right direction.

More on the "Backwards" Approach to Gestural Interfaces

After Michael mentioned Norman's (and Nielsen's) dislike for Apple's gestural interfaces in class, I received a daily e-mail from Putting People First that features an analysis of their team's testing results: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/gestural_interfaces_a_step_backwards_in_usability_6.html.

I found a few ID-related points extremely pertinent to my experience in helping produce the mobile version of foreignaffairs.com at work. They call out current gestural interfaces for their poor incorporation of the idea of feedback. In their example, they mention the varying functionality of the "back button" that sometimes causes complete, unwanted exits ("falling off the cliff") from applications. I had a similar experience. If you visit foreignaffairs.com with a mobile device (or desktop UA switcher), you'll see that we have a collapsed listing of "Regions," "Topics," and "Books & Reviews" -- these collapsed lists depend on JavaScript for their expansion and display of children links. When clicked upon in the iPhone, the browser begins to look like it is loading another page. On Android and Blackberry devices, the expansion is delayed by a significant second or two. Overall, the functionality points out a mistranslation in the context of feedback for show/hide menus from desktop to mobile versions.

Scalability is another important ID factor that we've had trouble with in light of the mobile site. Many of our publication listings throughout the site feature a line for pub title, one for the author, and one for the magazine issue. Against the generally recommended 40px x 40px spacing for mobile links, there's barely 2px separating each line and thus it is extremely easy to click on the wrong part of the publication listing, even for those with smaller fingers (of course, this is more of a problem on Androids and iPhones).

What this, overall, points out is a disconnect that definitely exists in UX design for the mobile world -- a disconnect between the new "context" (gestural interfaces, for example) and desktop-safe design decisions. Although Norman and Nielsen talk more about the use of non-proven design techniques in their article, there is a whole other cans of worms that clearly exists re: the use of *proven* design techniques that can't be adapted to the lawless world of gestural interfaces and mobile devices.

UI Fundamentals for Programmers - 37 signals

After hearing the sentiments about how programmers always either shoot down design ideas or accept them only to finally implement their own version of the design specs - I felt that there is a very strong need to help them gain a perspective on UI design. I am a programmer myself and I do not have any design background whatsoever.

Here is one the of the best presentations I came across when I was initially searching for an introduction to UI design for programmers.

UI Fundamentals for Programmers by Ryan Singer from ChicagoRuby on Vimeo.

Ryan talks about how UI is not a separate layer but is a part of the software and the most important from a customer perspective. For a customer the UI is the application!

Ryan talks about the key elements of design which helped me streamline my thought process about a design.

1. Modeling

2. Screens (Inside-out Method)

3. Flows

4. Templates

I believe programmers in your companies would definitely appreciate a perspective on UI design and it would only help your future interaction with them.