Open Question: How and When do you define usability requirements?
Open question to everyone.
Most of the requirements Product Managers create are functional requirements. i.e. indicating what the product or service must do or provide. i.e. the what.
But in many cases it’s not sufficient to simply define the “what“, and certainly with respect to software products, usability is a key issue to address.
There are many ways to address this, but I’m wondering if people out there have defined usability requirements, and if so, how and when (during the development cycle) they did it.
And just to be clear, by usability requirements, I’m talking about things like efficiency, intuitiveness and efficacy of the product/solution. These are subjective things in many cases, so they are harder to define and describe.
I’ll leave it there, but I’d really love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment or send an email to onproductmanagement at gmail dot com.
Saeed
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Open question: How and when do you define usability requirements? http://wp.me/pXBON-1CN #prodmgmt #usability
We just did a two day usability test in a lab type of environment and emerged with several dozen enhancements of varying priority. I found that the best way to capture these usability requirements was to append a creative brief and “speak” in terms of wireframes and mock-ups. At the end of the day, usability requirements were met through face-to-face collaboration and interaction rather than documentation, which makes this type of work ideal for an agile process.
Dennis,
Thanks for the response. Can you tell me more about the usability tests? Was the software a prototype, a beta or pre-release of a product?
Who were the participants in the test? Existing users, prospects, internal staff?
Were the findings coming out of the test surprising to anyone or were they expected given the state of the software?
RT @saeedwkhan: Open question: How and when do you define usability requirements? http://wp.me/pXBON-1CN #prodmgmt #usability
How DO you define usability reqs?? RT @onpm @saeedwkhan: Open q: How and when do you define usability requirements? http://wp.me/pXBON-1CN
Great question, Saeed. During user interviews, I have documented how many clicks, and how much time, it takes for them to complete a task (with current tools). This information serves as a benchmark for development to come up with a solution that is demonstrably better than the user’s current solution. The longer and more complex the task, the more opportunity there is to provide value for the customer.
Usability is usually a top-down design. the top level design is decided upon (something like the Ribbon UI / Workflow ) and the workflow is propagated. The final decision is zeroed in from the different mockups based on user feedback/ usage data etc.
Usability should be discussed early in the team on basis of userstories and mockups. As soon as there is a prototype you should do usertests with internal staff and a few key customers.
Like Aaron, I find number of clicks and amount of time to be useful metrics. I broaden the concept of “clicks” to “user gestures”, as I mentioned here in 2006. It’s also important to segment the users by skill level and background.
These metrics are a fundamental part of the nonfunctional requirements attached to a use case. In the Agile terminology, these metrics are found among the acceptance criteria for user stories.
Commented on the @onpm blog entry "How and When Do You Define Usability Requirements". http://bit.ly/ba7tFK #prodmgmt
You could define usability in terms of non-functional requirements. But, many usability problems originate in the model, rather than in the view.
Doing is tied to meaning. Meaning starts at the very beginning of requirements elicitation. Meaning is culture, but most user populations are not culture. Meaning requires a population architecture, so that meanings are preserved. When meanings are preserved, the user finds in an application a conceptual model not at variance with their own. There is little to learn. There is what I call meaning fitness.
Doing is tied to meaning. The closer the alignment between the two the higher the meaning fitness. Yes, you can get usability without meaning fitness, and you can develop applications devoid of meaning fitness, but you will lose many revenue opportunities if you do so, particularly in the late market where price-based competition kills products.
Usability starts with the conceptual model, not the view.
David,
Thanks for the comment, but to be quite honest, I really don’t understand the point you are trying to convey.
Saeed