Starting from scratch

An Organizational Learning Method for Applying Usability Guidelines and Patterns

“…International standards have been created [19], and standards have been used within organizations to ensure a degree of consistency across applications [6,20,21]. Domain-specific guidelines have also been created, the most prominent being guidelines for designing Web pages [22,23].…”

“…In one example witnessed by the author, an application was submitted to a human factors group in a large IT department that had a screen with 39 seemingly unordered buttons arranged in an array [5], a poor interface that would cause users to engage in lengthy searches to find desired features. This organization had a well-designed on-line style guide [6], but usability approval was so late in the development process that there was inadequate time and resources to fix the problem before it was shipped. The less mature work on usability patterns take a more proactive view of the design process, but add little to the usability guidelines perspective beyond a different format for documenting the pattern and some concerns for establishing the context of a pattern.…”

Pitching usability to your organization

“…Ideally, it's here that you may find your "usability champion." See [3] and [5] for a discussion of the role of usability champions. Depending on your source of start-up funds and the funding model in place for IT development, you may need to persuade managers both within IT and across other business units and to seek usability champions in both of these areas.…”

“…In other words, you need to demonstrate that usability can help the organization to achieve its key business goals. For the importance of senior management support, see [3] and [5]. Equally, if you are trying to win over other g r o u p s within the organization as allies, it is important to demonstrate that usability can also help them meet their specific goals.…”

“…Pick a strategic system to test, and make every effort to involve influential developers, senior managers, and clients as observers (but take care not to put senior managers in a situation where they will be made to look bad in front of their peers and staff). See [3] and [5] for a discussion of the value of usability testing for selling the usability message. Some organizations also have set up groups that are designed to bring developers and users into direct contact.…”