[tahoe-dev] barriers to using tahoe

[Raoul Duke]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Jody Harris <imhavoc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does the committee accept my qualifications as valid and useful?

i am not a member of the committee, just a rabble-rouser, so i can't
say ;-). personally, ideally, what i would look for in a ux process,
and in a person running it, in this order are 4 basic things:

1 defining the target audience. this can be an internal discussion.
the audience might be complex, and one might have to decide how to
take an incremental approach to satisfying sub-audiences. it is good
to have market research etc. here.

2 being able to design, based on fundamental ux principles (that's the
part that required education and experience), a basic framework for
satisfying the audience. this ability is more important than being
able to conduct focus group research or usability tests, but should be
done in concert with them. this is the kind of ability that most
obviously commands $.

(1 & 2 can involve things like personae, user stories, etc.)

3 doing as much of this with cheap, lightweight approaches as
possible. i mean one should be thinking of trying to do things with
paper mockups whenever possible, that kind of thing. sort of like
hollywood: you want to do it all in pre-production rather than saying
"we'll fix it in post" which is how most people fix software usability
issues imho.

4 researching the design with the target audience. this means trying
to find out what other users really experience. this should be a very
'selfless' type of research, one needs to be trying to see with other
folk's eyes. (what is good about 4 is that it can help people realize
how much self-delusion there is in development, and important 1, 2,
and 3 are. if you really listen, 4 can show you that you forgot to do
1-3 and that you are wasting resources.)

(3 & 4 are in some sense about dis/proving and refining 1 & 2.)

+ now all that might not be something the Tahoe committee thinks is
possible. but if you avoid doing that then i posit you run the large
risk of throwing away more time and money than if you rebooted a
little bit more and did it 'right'.

+ places to find ux people who might want to work on this: baychi.org,
acm sigs, etc.

sincerely.