Ann's Rant: Lawyers, Doctors and Usability Folk

Like calm technology, there are calm professions that go about their business ubiquitously, transparently and quietly. It's usually a sign of age. When a profession is long established, its orthodoxies, standards and procedures are so well embedded in the consciousness of the surrounding community that only scandals bring public focus back to matters of definition and scope. Bodies regulate them; training is institutionalised and small children see future ambitions in their light.

When a professional activity is new, it has no orthodoxies, standards or familiar procedures to steer by. And transition to a more august role is not always easy, elegant or wholly successful. So, let's talk usability. Things always look messiest when you are right up close. And many of us are fairly close just now to the business of examining what we do.

Much of the struggle to define a new discipline or profession is motivated by lack of security: a need to create sufficient space to flourish, sufficient respect to be allowed to get the job done without interference, to be paid to do the work in an appropriate fashion, to set up organisations to handle larger projects and, ultimately, to prove that the activity in which we are engaged is as worthy as that of the next person.

This process of defining standards and attempting to pin down practice can look like navel gazing to people uninterested by work boundaries or the health of the enterprise as a whole. Sometimes it is. It should come as no surprise that a business characterised by observation, analytical thinking and the generation of guidelines is interested in producing definitions. We delight in precision; but we also take pleasure in developing the best solution. And, from discussions taking place in various quarters, it is clear that some of us regard this evaluative process as a key opportunity to explode issues – to open everything up to scrutiny before arbitrary narrowing takes place. There are important matters of role, vocation and meaning to explore.

First, we can ask whether there is any value to pinning things down at all. I was at a UPA meeting last year when a group of participants were voting on whether – in an ideal world – usability work should be the preserve of specialists or wholly integrated into the job of designers and developers. The tendency in recent years has been towards separation and specialisation, with dedicated people becoming skilled and outsourcing to agencies to perform specific services. Now the usability role is visible, but, many would argue, disconnected from the design process. The vote at the UPA was decisively for integration. Ideally, once design practice is user-centred, the dedicated professional disappears. There cannot be much clearer an indication that the business is in flux and perhaps ought to remain that way. Not, perhaps, if the ideal is achievable... but that still doesn't necessarily leave us with a usability profession.

Then there is the question of what constitutes the job. And it varies. Skills and interests are still eclectic, reflecting the many routes in – from frustrated software programmer to psychologist to more group-orientated paths such as geography, sociology and media – and the many different ways of being employed. OK, so now we have dedicated staff, but what they are asked to do keeps developing. The technology under review changes with fearsome regularity, as does our understanding of what is important about it. Accepting Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column as a barometer, we observe that he has just started alluding to 'Joy of Use'. This follows growing interest from Don Norman in aesthetics and emotion, an increase in articles about affect amongst HCI folk and a user-centred design community that talks about compelling experiences. How far is the usability role beginning to overlap with that of marketing to look at influence? Meanwhile, plenty of usability people can talk to clients about cultural issues, accessibility and branding – and do. They are not restricted to assessing functionality in its simplest sense.

But, assuming that we are all engaged at core in improving performance, there are still enormous divisions. Some practitioners are part of a development team, responding to ideas at an early stage and testing low-fi prototypes with users. Others come in after a product is all but finished and critique. Can we meaningfully legislate for standards to which both these processes should adhere? Of course, there is an important difference between introducing standards of practice and introducing a standard response. The first might ensure that practitioners have enough experience to evaluate the particular needs of a project; the second reduces individual creativity and does not allow for an adaptation to context. But, even the first kind of standard might be hard pushed to incorporate the full range of practice.

That is only the start of a myriad of questions. With moves afoot to introduce a system to set some industry standards, it is relevant to ask whether accreditation of practitioners is a good thing. Is it protectionism by people already in the business as the industry takes a down-turn? Shouldn't a relevant qualification from one of the universities suffice? Should it be insisted upon? And if we embrace accreditation, what form should it take? Should it be in the nature of a professional body, binding members to a code of conduct, or a trade group, with a threshold ensuring a code of practice? How will it be judged whether someone is worthy to be accredited or not, and who will do the judging? Will we sit a formal test, or will work speak louder than words? What about evidence? What about training?

I asked a number of people recently how they arrived in the field of usability. A common theme was parents with a 'service culture' outlook: jobs in the public sector, in quality control, in the service departments of commercial companies. There was also interest in people and what they do. Frustration with ineffective products and processes scored high. And a sense of audience, of context, of valuing interaction... Let me say immediately that mine was an unscientific treatment of this particular research question – I just asked around some folks I knew.

Interestingly, there was also a sort of rage. It is possible to see the battle for usable products as a new political arena. I think some young hot bloods do. That was perhaps the closest I got to finding the vocation of usability. But it certainly doesn't unite all the individuals involved in usability work any more than practice or background does.

Maybe, by the time even the young hot bloods have reached retirement, there will be no more questions to ask about orthodoxies, standards and procedures. Maybe we will have achieved the near invisibility that comes with total acceptance. In some ways it would be a good thing. But, personally, I hope – for a mixture of reasons – that our industry never gets that dull.

Associated Link: Who is this woman?

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