Usability Needs a Coming of Age

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.