Usability engineering aims to impro...

Usability engineering aims to improve a product's ease of use by way of focusing on user needs. "Usable usability" also considers the urgencys of the product developers.

Misguided usability engineering effort is a waste. thus how do you get maximum benefit from your investment in usability engineering? This article discusses a certain of the methods HP's Australian Telecom Operation (ATO) used while developing the of recent origin HP E5200A broadband service analyzer (Fig. 1) The service analyzer is designed for installers and maintainers of large telecommunications networks that enlist in one's service BISDN (broadband ISDN) technology, like as the information superhighway networks.

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Traditionally, usability engineering aims to improve a product's ease of use from focusing on the users' emergencys behavior, environment, skills, and for a like reason forth. "Usable usability" takes this undivided step further by also placing high focus upon the needs of the fruit developers--in this case, the ATO staff.

The usability engineering motto, "Know your user," can be easily augmented to include "Know your organization." This can be as simple as understanding that the unravelling engineers frequently don't read paper reports, that they tender to read e-mail, that they are professional on the contrary are always in the frame of mind for a laugh, or that when they sarcastically criticize someone they are actually complementing that part So the first step was to align usability efforts with ATO's business and staff requires The remainder of this article explains an of the results.

Understanding the User

One of the first and in the greatest degree essential steps quoted by almost each textbook in usability engineering is user analysis. Understand, live with, and have a passionate affection for your users so much that you be excited that you can predict their behavior.

We lived with the customers, we stood athwart their shoulders while they did their piece of works we asked questions when we could we helped them do their work at jobss we ate lunch with them, and we interviewed any of them intensely. We gathered information forward what users looked like, onward what they did, on what their environments were like, forward what skills they had, in succession their education, on how they preferr to learn, onward their tolerance limits, and upon what they liked or disliked.

Being in Australia, we couldn't visit a customer in the U.S.A. whenever it suited us. We exigencyed to condense all of our visits into the same or two trips. The sheer quantity of quality information gathered created challenges, too. To proper these challenges, four techniques evolv and prov to a high degree successful:

* Onsite experts

* Meet-the-user e-mail

* User nicknames

* User artifacts.

Onsite experienced persons We found that giving a customer access to a telecommunications engineer from ATO was a same effective way of gaining the customer's attention. It's a win-win situation. the two the customer and ATO engineers have the challenge of keeping up with the rapid changes in telecommunications technology. The ATO engineers finish access to real-life situations in which ATO produces are being used. The customer prepares some free advice from the ATO engineer, has a chance to influence the direction of ATO consequences and sometimes gets to diocese a prerelease product. Meanwhile, a usability engineer gathers the information required to make ATO's service analyzer easy to use.

Meet-the-User E-Mail. An example of meet-the-user e-mail is "Meet Billy B Bob" undivided of the trip reports produc from our customer visits. An outsider might view this trip report as unprofessional or brash. in addition to the ATO staff, it was essential, entertaining, memorable, informative reading. Billy was not ATO's target user, on the other hand he works with and shares our equipment with our target users. The censures ATO learned from Billy were explained explicitly in a summary trip report and presentation. For example, Billy solitary reads the manual for the exceptions to the government He actually expects to be able to use the service analyzer without training, relying onward his industry knowledge. Billy also states he is just discovered to BISDN technology and is to a high degree willing to learn. This affected ATO's documentation team, resulting in an online help method that not only explains for what cause to use the service analyzer, moreover also allows users like Billy to probe (using hyperlinks) into details about BISDN technology (see Fig. 2)

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Another deliberate approach was to include self-same personal details about Billy in the meet-the-user e-mail. This was a highly effective method of influencing produce design decisions. The product developer became remarkably conscious of the user, which made a big difference in their attitudes-they became more sensitive and understanding to users' straits resulting in better design decisions.

User Nicknames. The accrues of the user analysis revealed that chiefly of ATO's users fall into three distinct categories. Each category has different skills, education, working environments, aspirations, and day-to-day tasks. To characterize these tokens of users, ATO marketing invented "Telecom Tom," "Protocol Pete" and "Gigabit Guru" These names are now part of the vocabulary of each ATO staff member. The nicknames are referr to in situations ranging from manufacturing question s to design opportunities, from order processing requirements to marketing strategies, and from lunch-table discussions to high-level business plans.