Architecture with the attribute of usability has become very popular in recent years, as well as accepted particularly since the advent of the Internet. Still, it has been difficult to implement its practice within organizations. Perspectives on usability are often oppositional. Some people consider usability from a product-oriented, bottom-up perspective that identifies usability with ease of use. Others favor a broader top-down approach in which usability is interpreted as the ability to use a system for its intended purpose (Bevan 1995). The main problem with equating usability with ease of use is that one may come up with a product that is usable but is not useful. This contradiction is absent in the latter approach. Usability has been interpreted by many and in differing ways. Some try to quantify it as a precise science, and others think of it as subjective art form. Although developers of code need to know specific attributes and are willing to incorporate them if that will increase the product's usability, presence or absence of predefined attributes cannot ensure usability, as it is usually impossible to know how users will react to a system unless they actually use it. While industry and thought leaders across the globe are struggling to define usability, Canaxia like many organizations is going through its own usability transition. Nigel Longfellow, Canaxia's chief usability architect, has been leading the crusade within the organization for several months. Usability is now a much talked-about term within the organization. When Nigel first joined Canaxia's architecture team, he had very quickly realized the following:
Early on, Nigel had adopted the ISO 9241 11 definition of usability that states, "Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use." Using this definition, Nigel had successfully set up a usability program within Canaxia. Different project teams that consulted on a wide variety of issues now frequently called upon Nigel. Nigel has had to fight many battles, though, including the following barriers:
Although a complete discussion of organizational barriers, and strategies for countering them, is beyond the scope of this book, this chapter offers some perspective on the five-point program that Nigel put in place, which helped him gain the acceptance for usability within Canaxia. This discussion will help you implement usability within your organization. Implementing usability within the organization still presents several challenges, including the following:
Everything that Nigel did is not applicable to all organizations. An ongoing managed program is important for maintaining the organization's focus on usability. Any program you may create will benefit from recording usability issues and measuring and reporting usability attributes. |