The Internet Usability Engineer

As business-to-consumer and business-to-business Web entities proliferate and the volume of daily transactions processed via this medium grows, challenges abound for the domain's usability engineer. Rather than being a static or even evolving technology and environment in the more traditional sense, business considerations notably time to market can drive a dizzying product development and deployment pace. What in the past took months, sometimes years of careful bricks-andmortar planning can now be virtually instantiated in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. For the usability engineer charged with assessing and reporting on Web site usability interface (UI) usefulness, ease of use, learnability, and likeability (Rubin, 1994) or, in the best case, contributing directly to the design process via user-centered design activities modified strategies that facilitate the quick turnaround of user feedback are essential if a contribution is to be made that influences product design from the user's perspective. To date, what has driven the product development and deployment process on the Web has tended to be the smaller, more flexible enterprise acutely aware of the need to dominate a market niche first or suffer the consequences (being second equates to being last)! As larger brick-and-mortar players have entered the arena or decided to reinvent themselves as Internet "players," a new urgency has crept into even the most previously conservative of large companies. With this has come the need for a generation of usability professionals to think anew about how to prove flexible in their approach to the new development model, if not embrace the changing paradigm with enthusiasm. But what trade-offs are inherent in approaching the domain with a new mindset? Can a worthwhile contribution still be made by a usability engineer when time forbids traditional test activities? Do we compromise the profession at large, the test results, or the value of our contribution by being appreciative of the market forces at play and proving flexible enough to "play ball"? While an emphatic "no" is not possible, we believe a qualified one is. Whether one is a test contractor, Silicon Valley Internet start-up employee wearing multiple hats, or professional with a large software corporation, the employer still pays the usability bills. From a purely mercenary perspective, no contribution is possible if there is no revenue-producing product to pay the costs of testing. Acknowledging this fact can sometimes be the most difficult part of adjusting to the changing circumstances. Living with this may, however, be helped by keeping the following in mind. Traditional usability testing activities, test scenarios with multiple participant users, large focus groups, and site visits are not always the best course of action in a high-speed environment where the effort must focus on being able to turn around feedback quickly. So what, if anything, still works? Do we abridge testing techniques, run fewer participants, or even abandon proven usability testing methods altogether? What still remains true is that every situation in which usability is important and contributes to product development is unique. The need to consider and cater to the peculiarities of each testing instance remains and, if anything, is now more important than ever. The professional usability engineer has always needed to stylize a test methodology to fit the product and available resources, and this remains no less relevant and important. But do we therefore abandon the proven usability methods and techniques, all the formulas we previously stylized to suit specific testing circumstances? NO! Indeed, what we must do, what many are already doing, is to reappraise how past methodologies can be modified, streamlined, or reinvented to suit the new environment in which the usability engineer must learn to operate. Heuristic evaluations (assessing a Web site against predetermined maxims for good usability) what some have taken to calling hallway testing, competitive analyses, and subtask testing are just some of the usability activities being used to turn around feedback more expeditiously without necessarily compromising the quality of the input into the design process. To not "play ball" in the Internet arena is to abandon the usability profession, leaving it a victim of technology and the pace of change. But our contribution is too important to let this happen. In fact, as Web users have grown seemingly more accustomed to and accepting of poor human-computer interaction in the VIs they navigate, our role in reversing this trend and making company Web sites more user friendly is ever more critical. That we can, albeit often only in postrelease site updates, have an impact on the user's experience should not be permitted to tarnish our role of bringing