Eli ([info]egoldberg) wrote,
@ 2007-11-08 10:40:00
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Live from World Usability Day at Microsoft...
(very quick break between sessions, given by various Microsoft user researchers and designers)

Holy shit! These people are brilliant. I just don't get how their company makes such sucky products.

P.S. First time I've ever heard an executive talk about formally engaging QA as a partner on usability: "We've got this great new process to partner with the testers to make sure the...user experience is being fulfilled as we do our quality controls as well." (Donna Flynn)

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[info]madfilkentist
2007-11-08 06:45 pm UTC (link)
A sufficiently large bureaucracy defeats the brilliance of individual members.

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Camel...horse...committee...you know the rest.
[info]thatcrazycajun
2007-11-08 06:51 pm UTC (link)
>>A sufficiently large bureaucracy defeats the brilliance of individual members.<<

Couldn't have put it better myself.

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[info]jhitchin
2007-11-08 07:04 pm UTC (link)
This is how:

Usability says, "Here is all this data on how this should work, how people use computers, and what would make the users more comfortable and happy with our products."

Dev says, "Did you hear something?"

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[info]starcat_jewel
2007-11-08 07:07 pm UTC (link)
And then Marketing says, "This is what we're selling to the users. Forget that other crap."

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[info]madfilkentist
2007-11-08 07:19 pm UTC (link)
You're both missing the key step. Management says, "Add 20 new features and ship it next week."

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[info]cpratt
2007-11-08 07:13 pm UTC (link)
I think my old department was pretty typical. 2003-2004 I worked directly with devs, PMs, UI designers, and usability researchers, and we all pulled together and shipped a great product. 2004, however, saw Ballmer lay the smackdown on costs, which coincided with Longhorn imploding as well as Service Pack 2 shipping, which was probably the last compelling Microsoft product. By the end of 2004, engineering processes had been radically revamped to focus almost exclusively on security (and, by extension, total test automation (because if you're shipping security patches as soon as exploits crop up in the wild, you'll need to be able to do all the testing quickly and without human intervention)), and all of that "nice" stuff was either forgotten about or cut (or dumbed down) in the name of cost cutting. Localization was farmed out to Chinese vendors at low costs, usability... well, I don't know what happened to that. I saw lots of costly, ridiculous Vista stuff going on in 2005-2006 that mostly involved swoopy graphics and inane talk about "experiences" instead of, well, nailing the basics.

But I digress.

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[info]jhitchin
2007-11-08 11:28 pm UTC (link)
Egad, I'm so glad I never hear "compelling end user experience" anymore.

*GAG*

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[info]danlmarmot
2007-11-08 07:32 pm UTC (link)
We had usability people at Microsoft??? Heheheh.

Here's how it worked in our group: it didn't. UI researchers at Microsoft could care less about what we did because it wasn't 'cool' or didn't help Microsoft compete with whatever Apple was doing. Yes, this is despite the fact that my product, Commerce Server, is the software behind a lot of large websites, and people often do buy things on the Internet these days.

They also would charge back the department obscene rates... and we didn't feel like paying them $XXX an hour just so they can say "use a horizontal menu" (like they did). It took forever to get them ramped up into our space--managing a major site like Costco.com is not easy--and in the end just wasn't worth it, not even for our administration apps.

It was just far easier to have a user council and sit down and listen to them, and then walk through tasks (oh, like creating a special product discount like buy 2 shoes, get socks at 50% off) with them.

And as Chris says, all quality testing at Microsoft went out the door in the name of automated API-style testing. Who cares what the interface looks like? (and I recall telling a senior VP that there was too much emphasis on test automation and he said "Oh, yes, totally--now what were your Build Verification Test code coverage numbers?" Like it mattered.

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Rationality != follow-through or internal gravitas
[info]sdorn
2007-11-08 10:21 pm UTC (link)
Complex systems are inherently squidgy things like water balloons and waterbeds, except with uncountably more cells and more inconsistency in density and elasticity. Push in, something squishes out in a completely unpredictable other place.

Then again, I'm currently reading Rosalind Williams's Retooling.

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