As a practitioner, one of the things that drives me bonkers is how behind the times much of the usability field is. It seems that so many of the usability practitioners I speak to today are stuck in the 70s in their lab coats running lab tests. And I’m not alone. In the past few months, I’ve had a number of conversations with companies who are looking for usability firms and are frustrated with their inability to “get it.” Here’s a quote from a recent conversation I had from a fellow UPA member:
“They don’t understand the business side of things.”
Yes, we have our usability methods and measurements. But what good is something that’s technically usable if it negatively impacts the business bottom line? That’s like saying technically Apache is working even if it isn’t displaying web pages. It might be technically running on the server, but I want to see the pages. Technically and theoretically doesn’t cut it.
We need to get out in the field. We need to do more ethnographic-based testing and research. We need to get out of the labs and into the streets.
Apple announced June 25th as the day you can get your hands on the new iPhone.
If you haven’t seen the ads yet, you should check them out. It’s going to be just as disruptive as the iPod. It’s going to change the phone and mobile computing industry. This thing is more than a phone. It makes smart phones look like amateurs who’ve been lucky to be in the game for so long. It’s so much more than a phone – it’s a completely contextual communication device.
But even if it is just a mobile phone to you with an iPod built in, somebody finally decided to do mobile communication the way it should be done – completely contextual. That’s the beauty of it – the interface is dependent upon the experience and activity. Leave it to Apple to figure out that communication is contextual, or atleast to acknowledge it in a product.
Hardcore HCI people might not like that the interface changes between activities. Some people like Tog and Nielsen might not like that – theoretically, it’s bad to have a theoretically unpredicatable interface. But from a practical usability standpoint, it’s brilliant. My interface is exactly what it should be based on the task I’m trying to accomplish. Who needs widespread predictability when you have contextual intuition?