Re: how to convince? (was Re: Too much data)

My take: A good convincer is money and/or time (usually the same thing  
when it comes down to it - which is to say, money) lost. The bottom  
line is ultimately the best convincer in my experience - i.e., if you  
are spending x$ per hour for somebody to do abc one way and if you did  
it another way you'd be spending less, that is powerful incentive.  
Before and afters using prototypes helps. Videotaping users doing a  
task one way and then videotaping the task being done another way and  
showing the results in terms of whatever it is that your client holds  
valuable (i.e., $ usually) - I found this to work ok. The tolerance  
for error in this idea is it does not account for all of the  
psychosocial stuff like egos wrapped up in a design and all of that  
kind of stuff.

l



On Feb 3, 2011, at 3:28 PM, Raoul Duke wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 3:10 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I worked on stuff just like this, Ryan. I had quite a fight trying  
>> to temper
>> the group's constantly insisting on adding more crap to the screen.  
>> I was
>> working for EDS. I had even done some user testing which helped  
>> tamp down
>> some of the stuff. Then of course the project was munged altogether  
>> but user
>> testing was a good convincer.
>
> over the years i've noticed that most people wouldn't understand good
> vs. bad usability if it ran up and punched them in the private parts.
> i mean, i see people working with their computer that they have
> obviously laboriously customized in various ways (be it the way the
> mac os x dock is positioned or hides itself; the # of toolbars open in
> ms office; the color choice or font size; etc.) that are obviously
> /just plain bad/, that i see them /actively fighting/ while they are
> doing something (e.g. giving a presentation). it drives me nuts.
>
> how the heck do we manage to educate around such issues?
>
> [note: it is one thing for your personal setup to be imho nuts-o. and
> it is another thing to want to please the customer since they have the
> bucks. but it is bad when there's something important like medical
> data that is getting all effed up.]
>
> sincerely.
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