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Improve sales and usability while controlling costs
by Fred Brown
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Kevin Lynch, Deputy Minister, Industry Canada, in his opening remarks to the Electronic Service Delivery Symposium '98 (Ottawa, February 1998), identified information technology and the information highway as the engine for growth into the 21st century. Mr. Lynch warned about stagnant productivity across much of the Canadian economy for the past two decades as a barrier to meeting our economic potential. In an article in the Financial Post, Andrew Sharpe, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, points to the paradox of increasing use of information systems and little overall productivity growth. This paradox raises serious questions for future investment in information technology. We are already seeing business leaders taking a skeptical stance on increasing Internet investment because of doubts over the payoffs. Pioneering research work done in such places as Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM points the way to improving user productivity. Thomas K. Landeur in his recent book, The Trouble with Computers, argues for involving users intimately in information system design. In their book entitled Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, of InContext Enterprises, explain how to gather and employ user data efficiently. The following ideas will help you improve sales and usability while lowering costs: 1. Study the user at work Users have a difficult time explaining exactly what they do. To find out, observe users doing tasks at their place of work. You will learn the problems they have, observe exactly how they do things, see how they relate to their organization and other people, and take notes about the physical layout - all important information for designing and marketing better products. Knowing the user well will help you focus on what is important for success and sales. 2. Employ user language and concepts Put the user's words and ways |
of thinking right into the user interface. Build the user interface around a metaphor that users understand like the Macintosh "desktop." Employ user terminology in the system's menus and dialog boxes. By speaking the user's language you will simplify the documentation, cut user support costs, and sell more effectively. 3. Tune as you develop People and computer systems interact in complex ways. Even when designed with the best knowledge, a user interface still needs to be "tuned" in order to produce benefits. New user interface designs will average around 40 design flaws. Luckily, doing just a modest amount of usability testing, at regular intervals during development, will identify most of the flaws and validate their solutions. Testing the interface with just two users will identify roughly half of the flaws while six user tests will find around 90 per cent. Tuning your system will do more than make it play like a Stradivarius: delivering on results will build customer loyalty and cut customer support costs. 4. Support learning on the fly Users learn by doing real work solving real problems. Focus user documentation on the tasks users do rather than on how the product functions internally. Provide the right information at the right time for the task at hand. Make error messages guide the user out of trouble and back on track. Design wizards and other tools to help the user get down to business quickly. You will lower documentation and user support costs - not to mention generating some great selling features. 5. Maintain continuity on your team Your knowledge of your users represents a valuable asset. As you research, develop, and test you will learn what does and doesn't work. Over time, as the team grows or experienced members move on to other challenges, the new team members risk repeating old mistakes. Maintain a user profile and product design history to help bring new team members up-to-speed. You will be able to capitalize and build on your competitive advantage. |
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