software design

I just finished planning a contextual inquiry for a new product. This book covered everything I needed to know, from how to structure the plan to suggestions on what to bring for gifts. I especially like the paragraphs that describe real things that happened to the authors and their friends while doing these studies.

If you are considering any kind of site visit or field study in order to learn about the end users of your product (AND YOU SHOULD), you will find this book highly useful. Check with me later as to how well it helped me write up results...

If there is one strong message in this book, it is: Go talk to the people who will use your product. It's an important message. Software designers and writers spend too much time with each other developing clever tricks, while the poor user, often left to self-train with a poorly written manual, gives up in frustration. The authors follow their own advice--in addition to telling you how to conduct a site visit to the end users, there are clear instructions (based on experience) on planning a visit, structuring questions, how to make the site visit useful for both the analyzers and the users, and figuring out what the user said and what it means about the product. There are reminders about release forms and examples of the forms themselves. Case studies help make the points clear and undestandable. A thoroughly readable book in clear and simple language that can be started anywhere for quick help, or read cover to cover for a complete course.

This is the first book I've read on this subject, and it was a great starting point for me. I'm responsible for implementing a system that, in its current state, is not "user-friendly" enough. This was the book I was looking for to help me express the criticality of the user's perspective to the designers as we embark on the redesign.

A starting point for our dialog will be the classification of users into "novices, advanced beginners, competent performers, and experts," and their corresponding characteristics. The example showing that approximately 80% of users do not move beyond the "advanced beginner" stage on a tool that they use relatively infrequently. This matches our experiences. For our product to be successful, we need to focus on these users, who will be the majority of our population.

I also take to heart the reactions that can emerge from the shock of seeing real users working with the prototype or product for the first time: defensiveness, despair, rush to redesign, and the thought that it can all be solved by training or documentation. Been there, felt that.

Through reading this book, I have a new appreciation for the complexity of the task ahead of us, and the tremendous amount of time and attention it is going to take to get it right. Fortunately, we have a user community that is currently very eager to help us get it right -- this book is going to be a valuable tool to help us collect, structure and analyze their input and experiences.

I considered at a lot of other books before choosing this one -- it hit the mark for me as a manager-level view of user and task analysis, tool development and implementation. It's not a computer programming book (many user-interface books are focused on the specifics of GUI -- even including code), and it's not a book targeted at psychology majors (they hit the basics of cognitive psychology -- but from a "this is what users are like" perspective, not a theoretical standpoint.) It's an excellent starting point for the rest of us.