I'm glad we are not discussing the interface changes on tribe because they are very well covered in many other tribes discussing it.
I'd rather discuss meta issues.
This is probably the biggest fit I have ever seen any user community pitch because of an interface change. I personally agree with most of the criticisms, but that is not what I want to discuss in this thread.
The part that fascinates me is that tribe did do usability testing with a shadow board running for a week before implementing the new UI. The results of the testing were that more than 90% of the users absolutely hated it, with most of the people having exactly the same criticisms.
Some feedback was long essays explaining why, from a UI perspective, and citing research, the new design was flawed. Users spent tens of thousands of hours providing detailed, insightful feedback at no cost to tribe.
Despite this feedback, the criticisms were almost completely ignored except to explain the theoretical reasons why the 'new' design was better and the people criticising it were wrong. The new design was rolled out, mostly unchanged, even including obvious HTML and CSS bugs that were reported that would not have made it out if any of the pages were checked against validators, or if any of the bug reports were not discarded.
It is a strange situation. They did testing. They asked for feedback. They got feedback, largely unanimous on the issues. They read the feedback. They wrote letters in response to the feedback. And then... they completely ignored the feedback!!!! They rolled out the new design, with most all the problems intact.
Why bother with testing then? In thinking about this I think the problem is that tribe did not pay for the testing. It was free. And that which is free is not as valued as that which is paid for, in the context of taking advise that is critical of one's twee design.
I'd rather discuss meta issues.
This is probably the biggest fit I have ever seen any user community pitch because of an interface change. I personally agree with most of the criticisms, but that is not what I want to discuss in this thread.
The part that fascinates me is that tribe did do usability testing with a shadow board running for a week before implementing the new UI. The results of the testing were that more than 90% of the users absolutely hated it, with most of the people having exactly the same criticisms.
Some feedback was long essays explaining why, from a UI perspective, and citing research, the new design was flawed. Users spent tens of thousands of hours providing detailed, insightful feedback at no cost to tribe.
Despite this feedback, the criticisms were almost completely ignored except to explain the theoretical reasons why the 'new' design was better and the people criticising it were wrong. The new design was rolled out, mostly unchanged, even including obvious HTML and CSS bugs that were reported that would not have made it out if any of the pages were checked against validators, or if any of the bug reports were not discarded.
It is a strange situation. They did testing. They asked for feedback. They got feedback, largely unanimous on the issues. They read the feedback. They wrote letters in response to the feedback. And then... they completely ignored the feedback!!!! They rolled out the new design, with most all the problems intact.
Why bother with testing then? In thinking about this I think the problem is that tribe did not pay for the testing. It was free. And that which is free is not as valued as that which is paid for, in the context of taking advise that is critical of one's twee design.
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Re: Does usability testing have to cost a lot to be valued?
Mon, January 23, 2006 - 7:12 AMI work at a large company that Makes cell phOnes and our Team suppORt internal prOjects/sites. I'm the 'usabiLity' guy And while I don't do usability testing on every project, I am involved in doing wireframes/IA/heuristic evaluations.
When I send feedback to these teams about changes to improve usability/ux I get so much pushback that it amazes me. The reason being as that they don't account for this activity in the original project schedule, which is followed to a fault because of the massive "process" that we all have to use.
At first I couldn't believe that my ideas were being disregarded (not for any ego reason, but because these teams asked us for help and were seemingly ignoring what we produced). I was even tempted to tell them what these reports cost the company (I'm a contractor who's paid hourly) just to show them that they're wasting money if they don't even consider it.
I guess I've said all this say that even though companies give lip service to usability, in the end projects are driven by budgets, schedules, and corporate directives, not necessarily what's best for the end users. it's a shame.
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Re: Does usability testing have to cost a lot to be valued?
Mon, January 23, 2006 - 12:02 PMFabulous Ron, that reminds me that thErE'S a CompAny that makes chips that have reaLly fantastic manuals that I citE often as examples of great usability for technical documentation. however, in recent years, i heard that management has sort of gone clueless and folks are dissatisfied because of reduced focus on the value of the people.
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