NoDesign

Quelques reflexions à propos d’usabilité et d’expériences autour de l’article « 8 erreurs fondamentales de l’usabilité » de Mark Hurst

Cet article intéressant décrit les méthodes généralement pratiquées dans les entreprises en terme de construction de ce que l’on appelle l’usabilité. Ce terme est une des manières dont la communauté des ergonomes américains accompagne le passage des TIC de l’âge du déploiement pionnier à l’âge de l’usage et de la maturité. (le palier créatif de Marc Giget).

La papier de Mark Hunt décrit la différence entre l’esprit du web et des stic et la réalité des entreprises établies leaders sur leurs domaines. Il donne un aperçu mature et véridique de la façon dont la plupart de ces entreprises intègrent le customer focus, le user centred, le crowed sourcing. Une palette entre de mauvais storytelling publicitaires, branding forcené, focus group faussé par l’animateur. Il décrit également le passage difficile des sciences humaines académiques au contexte de l’entreprise.

Il évoque également la non-prise en compte des paroles d’experts et la rareté de leur présence lors des tests utilisateurs (souvent pour des raisons budgétaires ou de concurrence). Il pointe pour finir le danger de l’addition d’expertise verticale tactique au détriment d’une mise en perspective stratégique « pourquoi ont fait les choses ».

On pourrait pour parler de conception innovante, élargir ces réflexions de quelques propositions:
Avant d’être un client, un utilisateur est une personne a qui l’on s’adresse. Il y a une réelle différence entre ce que l’entreprise offre et ce que le destinataire reçoit: un ressenti, ce que l’on appelle une expérience vécue. Dans ce contexte la notion de désirabilité est au moins aussi importante, en effet il n’y a pas de besoins avérés pour la plupart des propositions économiques contemporaines en occident. Il faut donc élargir le concept d’expérience globale au-delà du champ de la seule usabilité.

L’utilisabilité est un du, le désirabilité devrait être une obligation.

On pourrait citer des exemples de moment important dans la proposition et la mise au point d’un produit: On néglige trop souvent le poids des méthodes et process rationnelle tactique dans de la conduite de l’innovation et de la conception de produit. C’est rassurant, mais nuit souvent à l’innovation et au produit. La notion d’accident créatif donne parfois naissance à l’innovation disruptive ou au bon usage. La synthèse créative (des choix) comme réponse à la complexité. La dimension émotionnelle, sensible, d’amour et de respect du destinataire. Le concepteur d’UI (interface utilisateur) est souvent celui qui fait effectivement l’UX (user expérience):le look and feel. Une bonne expérience est multisensorielle. Une bonne expérience est réflexive, c’est à dire qu’elle intègre l’utilisateur dans la boucle d’interaction. Un produit et service numériques est culturel, identitaire, social et possède une relation forte à la marque ou à l’institution qui la porte. Le rôle du design n’est plus tant le beau que le bon pour le destinataire. Il est à ce titre un lien, un agrégateur et un porteur de synthèse (Paola antonelli – Moma) entre les composantes du projet.
En un mot, le Design thinking est des acteurs stratégiques de la production de la bonne expérience produit/service.
Et vous qu’en pensez-vous ?

Good Experience: The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it) – by Mark Hurst

The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it) May 20, 2008 I recently gave a talk to a company that is beginning to invest more in the customer experience of its website. They wanted to know: how do we avoid the errors of other teams making this investment? There are lots of gurus, blogs, and trade groups, all promoting their own tools and methods – usability, user experience, interaction design, information architecture, and so on. The team knows that they want « better usability » but aren’t sure about the next step. And this company is growing fast, so a lot is at stake in them getting it right. If they build the right processes in-house (or hire consultants that offer them), they’ll reap the rewards. I told them that when committing to customer-centered development (of a product, service, website, or whatever), it’s important to stay strategic, always try to improve the business, and listen to customers (as human beings, not as users of a tool).
But in doing so, avoid the following:
1. Not conducting any customer research.
Some companies still don’t conduct customer research, but instead rely on their best internal guesses as to what their customers want. Except in organizations where ESP is a common employee skill, this tends not to lead to healthy, customer-centered operations.
2. Conducting « pretend » research.
Let’s pretend our user’s name is Jane. Let’s pretend she is 38 years old, drives a purple Prius, reads mystery novels, loves bulldogs, and likes to go sailing. Let’s pretend she comes to our website and likes feature A but not feature B. Therefore, we should develop more things like feature A. See? We’re very customer-centered. This is the fun of creating a persona, which allows teams to make decisions based on fictional people, rather than doing the hard work of listening to real customers.
3. Conducting research, but the wrong type.
One of the most popular research methods in business today is the focus group: an individual moderator, typically a high-energy person, encourages a live panel of many respondents to give feedback on a product or service. This can be useful in some situations. But where customers interact individually with a company – say, on a website or in some other customer experience – the one-to-many method of focus groups doesn’t yield very appropriate findings.
4. Conducting one-on-one research, but with tasks defined beforehand.
Traditional usability dictates that the moderator should write the test questions beforehand. But how can you know the right questions to ask before you’ve even met the customer? Task definition comes from the age of software, when the tool – a piece of software – was being optimized (thus the term « usability » refers to – and focuses on – a tool, not a human). Customer experience is concerned with the customer; their individual, real-life experience is what we’re supposed to be observing. It’s beyond presumptuous to think you can predict the appropriate tasks before the session starts.
5. Not inviting stakeholders to attend research.
I’ve often heard the complaint from UX professionals that « we don’t have enough impact in the organization. » Maybe that’s because too many practitioners write reports about their work, and lob them over the cubicle walls, rather than getting stakeholders involved in the research. Writing reports may work in the publish-or-perish academic world, but in the business world, it’s infinitely better to have stakeholders physically sit and watch customers as they interact with the website (or product or service or whatever).
6. Not prioritizing findings.
My favorite, love-to-hate conclusion of a usability report goes something like this: « We uncovered 52 usability errors on the site, and here’s a list of all of them. » Oops: an unending list of tactics that no one will want to wade through. Instead, whenever discussing results (presumably in-person, to stakeholders who attended labs), focus on the most important two or three strategic findings – the ones that will really move the needle on key business metrics.
7. Not relating to business objectives.
Some usability researchers seem to see their work as an extension of their master’s thesis in human factors – a scholarly exercise that demonstrates their mastery of various research and analysis methods. This may work in academic research labs, but in the business world, the point of this work is to improve the business. If you want to have an impact, then conduct the work in the light of business objectives: increasing revenue, or cutting costs, or improving usage or conversion rates or pageviews or something that helps pay the bills. 8. Missing the larger picture.
Tactical disciplines like usability and information architecture are useful, valuable, and have their place in the development process. But what’s much more important is to understand the people, the human beings, who make the company possible. The customers, the visitors, the patients, the readers, the guests, whatever you call them – their experience is what determines the company’s success or failure. So focus first on the overall experience. It’s strategic, not tactical. It’s about the people, not the tool. Focusing on the larger picture first will set a better context in which to work – later – on usability tactics.