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Would you like to order the movie "Confessions Of A..." on The Movie Network On Demand?
If you wanted to order a movie from my cable provider, the movie list wouldn't divulge the movie's complete name. Even the movie's detailed description screen shows the same truncated title. The top of the screen is otherwise used for the station's logo ... and some empty space (previously a very useful picture of popcorn).
In case you wondered, the missing word is "Shopaholic"... I think.
My wife has an iPod and I have a Nokia cell phone that boasts a fancy music player. We often play long lectures, podcasts and audio books. Missed a word or a sentence? Out of luck: No rewind. Bored? No fast-forward. Cassette and CD players had this feature decades ago — where is it?!
(Media producers have found a workaround: They "index" their content into artificial 3-minute tracks. Awkward solution for an unnecessary problem.)
I truly don't think that the companies in question are incompetent. I think this is a matter of process and priorities. Just the thing that Agile development should help them get straight.
In Scrum and XP the product owner / customer can and should prioritize all the necessary features and aspects of the product, "functional" and "non-functional" alike. Frequent iteration allows feedback from testers and actual users to direct development to areas that matter most.
Trouble is, most product owners are very busy. What they have to account for when shaping a product is staggering. Even when they are assisted by business analysts, their natural focus is likely on market, features, correctness, and user benefits.
Other trouble is, they often don't possess the deeper skills of usability and interaction design. If they want to rely on experts, tough luck. Companies just don't hire enough of them. Eventually, many interaction design decisions are made by the software engineers. I've known very few engineers who didn't believe they were good at designing for usability. But were they?
If your team is developing a product with any measurable level of usability, you should:
- Add an interaction designer to the customer team. Get your company to hire one full time, or contract one. It's a valuable investment: you'll lose fewer customers.
- The designer should work closely with the lead customer (product owner) in producing stories and mock-ups — all in true evolutionary design fashion, not in a big-design-up-front kind of way.
- Incorporate usability testing early on and truly act on its feedback. Be ready to admit that something you built just isn't usable.
You need real people with real problems to test your product's usability. For instance, I love driving my new Toyota Corolla, but there's no room to stretch my left leg. I must bend it at the knee, which rather annoys me. But another person I know, who has a bad knee, would think twice before buying this car, despite all its great features.
Remember my post on delighted customers? Your customers will be delighted by great usability, not extra features. ( Read the post here)
Copyright © 2009, 3P Vantage, Inc. All rights reserved.
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