Why are usability evaluation methods so rarely employed?

Question

There are many usability evaluation techniques that have been developed over the history of software development. But it seems to me that they are rarely used in practice.

Why aren't usability evaluation tools and methods actually used much?

Or are they used more than I've been led to believe?

Answer 1

They are rare, HCI is a specialist area in IT. I know next to nothing about it, but a friend of mine was a HCI engineer and she could recite reams of data about the topic, show websites, groups, academic papers, etc.

HCI is still an area that (undeservedly) gets little attention, probably because its seen as less important to the business of selling software - shrinkwrapped software is sold on marketing claims, not actual usability of it, so there is little incentive for the people who pay for the software development to pay for HCI too.

If you want to learn more (and its good you should encourage its use - I've used too many crappy interfaces, and though I try to develop better I often don't get the chance to really improve things for my users), try this website/book.

Answer 2

The problem mainly stems from the fact that most companies that makes software never stops and ask "How could I make this user interface easier to use?", but instead most often just asks "Is the user able to do XYZ with the interface?".

Often, the company will just ask "If the user knows everything we do, can the user do XYZ with this inteface?" which is even worse.

Answer 3

Often usability methods are not applied because people making buying decisions will not pay for usability.

One area where I have personal experience is conference-management software (things like CyberChair, START, and a million others). These things must be fairly easy to write, because there are so many of them, but I swear most of the people who write them have never observed a referee or a program chair at work. And to return to the question of why, in this case program chairs and committee members are highly distributed in space---it would be very difficult for a developer to find one and watch him or her at work. Simulating the workflow requires a large setup cost, and in any one town there area probably very few individuals who are qualified to be subjects in a usability study, and their time is valuable. And there is not enough profit to justify usability. SIGPLAN, my professional society, recently contracted to use inferior software for its conferences because the inferior product was perceived to be ten times cheaper than a highly regarded competitor. The time of the volunteers who use the product was, as always, valued at zero.

Another war story and I'll shut up: when I worked for the phone companies one developer group actually had a usability specialist. But he was the only one allowed to interact with customers. I think in a lot of shops management is afraid to let developers and customers interact directly. This attitude makes it hard to apply usability methods.

People whose bottom line depends on usability do the studies. eBay is a good case in point. I was a subject for them once for an incredibly exhausting 90 minutes, just trying to sell some books. They sent 2 trained engineers with video equipment to my home, and these guys were incredibly professional. They did not bail me out when I became frustrated, and not until the study was over did they tell me that the reason I had such a bad experience was because I had tripped a bug in their software. Oh, and they paid me $200 for 90 minutes of my time. eBay obviously believes that making it easy to sell on their site makes them more profitable, and they are willing to spend real money to find out where real users get into trouble.