RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question

Subject: RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
From: rebecca rachmany <rebecca -at- COMMERCEMIND -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 09:15:36 +0200


I'd like to see the answers compared to "The product produced by your
company/department undergoes formal usability testing..."

My beef isn't that the documentation doesn't get the usability testing it
needs, but that the *product* itself doesn't get the testing. I don't know
that any of the companies I've worked with over the last three years know
that there is even such a concept as usability testing. Obviously, if your
product isn't tested, your documentation isn't tested, either. In my current
workplace, at least the company is letting me "act" as if I am a user and
make usability suggestions--they actually implement them, too. I would bet
that most of you are in the same position: as the documentation person, you
are the only "usability tester" the product sees before release.

Rebecca Rachmany
Commercemind
PO Box 920, Kfar Saba 44109
972-9-7642000 x217
Mobile: 050-900600
rebecca -at- commercemind -dot- com




>> The documentation produced in your group undergoes formal
>> usability testing
>>
>> * Always
>> * Frequently
>> * Occasionally
>> * Rarely
>> * Never
>> * Not applicable/None of the above
>
>I hope the responses to this poll are honest. So far, they
>show that we are a
>long way from where many of us say we want to be on usability
>testing. Of
>course, you have to take things as you are able to, and in my
>place we're still
>teaching TW 101. Usability testing is somewhere in the 500s, I fear.




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