Usability Too Close to Business? Never!

When I was an academic (more than twenty years ago, I now realise), I used to attend both psychology conferences and ergonomics conferences.  As someone who has always been interested in the practical application of knowledge about human behaviour (especially in relation to technology use), I tended to feel slightly uncomfortable in both locations, not quite fitting in with either.  So there was a touch of deja vu when I attended the industry day at the HCI2005 conference in Edinburgh in September.

I was invited there to speak about international usability standards – which I get involved in because I believe that standards are an important vehicle for getting usability taken seriously by industry.  And being taken seriously is important to System Concepts business.  I was saddened by two observations.  One was that there were relatively few participants from industry there – despite the best efforts of the organisers who had set out to invite practitioners to cover some important topics.  The other observation, which is where the deja vu comes in, was of a discussion about the differences between usability and human computer interaction.

Now I am not suggesting that such discussions can never be useful.  I have written before about the tendency for the recent growth in usability to focus solely on testing and to ignore or undervalue the role we can play in requirements capture, design and implementation.  In System Concepts, we do not get very bothered about what our work is called as long as we help our clients solve business problems.  However, what was strange about this discussion was that I think I heard usability practitioners being criticised for being too close to marketing and business whereas HCI was seen as a noble academic pursuit, untainted by commercial concerns.  Of course, I also heard several academics quickly distance themselves from such an ivory tower and stress the practical value of their research.  Nonetheless, I was left with that slight feeling of alienation which I had experienced twenty odd years ago. 

System Concepts is a business and we live by selling our skills and experience.  However, we also belong to an extended community which includes other consultancies as well as universities and research groups.  We are happy to share some of our knowledge through such conferences.  My colleague also attended HCI 2005 and gave an excellent presentation on a project on attractive things working better.  But our focus is always to use our knowledge and skills to help our clients solve business problems.  When we conduct usability or accessibility testing, our aim is to improve our client’s products, not simply to identify or document ‘problems’.

If that puts us too close to business or marketing for some of our academic colleagues, then that’s a pity – but I think it’s their problem.

Tom Stewart,
Joint Managing Director, System Concepts

Frst published Sept 2005

Last reviewed Jan 2008