Re: FW: Usability Testing

[Sella Rush <sellar -at- APPTECHSYS -dot- COM>]

Lynn Perry wrote (in reference to developers ignoring techwriters feedback
on usability):

>I wonder how prevalent this situation is. It seems ubiquitous. Is it?

Yes.  It's called being territorial.  Developers don't like us telling them
how to design their applications anymore than we'd appreciate them telling
us how to write our documentation (I know *I* hate that!).

It has to do with all that awful "teamwork" stuff, and whether they respect
your position AND your right to have an opinion on their product.  It has to
do with whether they see you as a person who writes up that documentation
stuff or whether as someone who has knowledge they can make use of.  Of
course it also depends on how territorial their nature is.

My own sad story:

I once made some comments to a developer about the organization of dialog
boxes and commands in his interface.  I told him how I thought they should
be organized and provided a rationale (I suggested we group general user
controls and sys admin type controls separately to prevent users from
accidentally screwing up something major).  I even put the organization down
on paper and gave it to him.  He agreed with my ideas, but a deadline came
and went and nothing happened.

Later, I got the chance to actually redesign the dialog boxes myself.  I
spent four solid days figuring out Visual C++, creating 10 new dialog boxes,
and making other improvements (which I ran by the programmer).  A few weeks
later I checked out the latest version to look at *my* new dialog boxes.
Imagine my surprise to find they looked nothing like the ones I'd created.
The programmer, who hadn't had time to make my changes, had found time to
reorganize the ones I'd done according to a different plan and recode them.
When I asked him why, he said he thought his way was more logical.  I
reiterated the logic that we'd agreed on, and he said "Oh that's right,
*that's* why we decided to do it that way."  He'd simply forgotten.  But
it's now six months later, and no changes have been made.

This programmer was territorial.  He verbally agreed with what I had to say
but didn't bother doing anything about it.  And later, he couldn't stand my
making changes to his application without putting his stamp on it.

He was the same way about our web site.  No one could make a change or add a
page without him tweaking it some way.

Sella Rush
mailto:sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems (ATS)
Bremerton, Washington
Developers of the CCM Database