Brainstorming

Brainstorming is an individual or group process for generating alternative ideas or solutions for a specific topic. Good brainstorming focuses on the quantity and creativity of ideas: the quality of ideas is much less important than the sheer quantity. After ideas are generated, they are often grouped into categories and prioritized for subsequent research or application.

Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Articles>Usability>Methods>Collaboration

Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

I often find that client companies keep two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.

Kozatch, David. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Usability>Marketing>Collaboration

Can Collaboration Help Redefine Usability?    

A collaborative knowledge space would provide great value to the usability community. In particular it would: Help define the field and give it a presence that provides professionals and the public with a single source for theoretical, practical and speculative information about usability; encourage the integration of research and practice; invite colleagues in related fields to participate and share their perspectives; serve as a platform to advance our understanding of collaboration and knowledge management tools. Most of the tools needed to implement a collaborative knowledge space are already available and there are a number of related activities already underway that could feed into this project. It would be a great deal of work but I believe it would also yield a great deal of benefit.

Kreitzberg, Charles B. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

Collaboration Sessions: How to Lead Multidisciplinary Teams, Generate Buy-In, and Create Unified Design Views in Compressed Timeframes

I have participated in, led, and suffered major website redesign efforts. Whether at process-heavy consultancies, notable product companies, or design studios, all teams experience the same points of pain: late feedback, lack of common design vision, and complaints that individuals or teams didn’t have enough input.

Verhage, Sasha. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Usability>User Centered Design

How Product Teams Benefit from Usability

Product teams can leverage usability in three simple ways. First, usability can disambiguate requirements. Second, it can push a product closer to perfection with a small investment. Finally, usability helps product teams inform the organization about potential and expected support issues.

Rhodes, John S. Apogee (2006). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

Learning from the Work of Others

Rolf Molich has conducted two experiments comparing the work of different usability teams, examining their practices, and looking for patterns and differences. His experiments provide extremely valuable material for sharpening individual usability practices.

Schroeder, Will. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

The Most Non-Boring Article About The UPA Board Ever

A quick overview of the Usability Professionals Association Board--what functions it performs, how it's structured, and who's currently performing what role.

Sherman, Paul J. Usability Professionals Association (2006). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

QuikScan: An Innovative Approach to Support Document Use in Meetings  

QuikScan is a set of summarizing and highlighting techniques that enable readers to quickly find information in documents. The foremost goal of the QuikScan Project is to improve the quality of business meetings by supporting attendees who must deliberate over documents they may not have carefully read. We envision QuikScan as a new career path for professional editors.

Zhou, Quan and David K. Farkas. STC Proceedings (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Methods>Usability

Shopping for Ideas at UPA Idea Markets

Ever feel that the best part of a conference happens between sessions? Ulf Andersson did. So, in the 1970s, he created a format for conference sessions called an 'Idea Market.' Attendees are free to roam from one idea station to the next, until they find a topic that grabs their attention. 'Activators' at each station stir up lively discourse on a variety of subjects in an interactive, fluid session. I had attended Idea Markets at other conferences and thought that they might be perfectly suited to UPA conferences because of the potential for getting practitioners buzzing about a variety of topics. So, I submitted a proposal to conduct an Idea Market at UPA in 2002 as a special type of 'panel' session. The reviewers had a tough time grasping the concept. Fortunately, the panel co-chairs went with it, and the first-ever Idea Market launched successfully.

Chisnell, Dana E. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

Strategic Usability: Partnering Business, Engineering and Ease of Use

The shift to internalizing usability for an organization can be accelerated by thinking about usability from a strategic, instead of tactical, perspective. Tactical use of usability engineering is responsive and isolated, focusing on adjustments to existing designs, often late in the schedule. Strategic use of usability or user research is proactive and integrated, improving decision making at many levels of project and business planning. To make the transition from tactical to strategic work, a usability engineer needs to develop partners and champions within the heart of an organization. It can often take several projects releases, and the cultivation of multiple partnerships with key players in an organization for this change to come to fruition.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2002). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

Team USA: The USAbility Team  

Most companies want to be recognized for producing usable products, for the quality of products must be high if they are to be accepted into today's competitive market. However, usability planning relies on interaction with other departments and their members. In other words, the most successful way to ensure product usability is to set up a test team consisting of representatives from various departments. This paper details the members of that test team and discusses their overall responsibilities in the testing process.

Dorazio, Patti A. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Usability>Collaboration>SMEs

Usability Team Structures

There are two basic alternatives for structuring a usability/UCD group within an organization: members of the group can be centralized in a single department, or, members can be distributed among development teams.

. Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Articles>Usability>Project Management>Collaboration

Web Pages, Interactive Interfaces and Worm Holes: The Next Generation of User Interface Designers  

Working in teams has its challenges. What would you do if you were part of a team that included software engineers, usability professionals, managers, teachers and elementary school students? What would you do if the team had to learn about web technology and user interface design in a few short weeks and then apply that skill to creating a web page ? Well, we had fun, and we achieved our goal. Join our panel discussion to hear more about an exciting project between members of IBM’s S/390 team and local elementary schools from Hyde Park, New York.

Bahruth, Carol, Kirsten Brunner, David Hans, Vikki Hanast and Cheryl Loughlin. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design>Usability

What Kind of Teamwork Improves Usability?

Professionals are increasingly working in networked teams where electronic media and asynchronous communication play an important role. So how can communication behaviours in these contexts predict usability? Do efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction in the communication process lead to the same for the resulting documentation?

Edwards, Kirstie. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration>Usability

When the Show Must Go On, It’s Time to Collaborate Or Die

No one knew what to do. But there was a deadline, and the reviewers were coming. As a team, we walked through the schedule again and again until we had a plan. The next day, the video was edited, the shop finished the screens, and the production crew walked through the critical paths.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

The Why and How of an Effective Workshop

I've held several workshops for my company and I've done a mess of workshops at CHI and UPA. Workshops are a uniformly great experience: Put a bunch of usability professionals in the room, propose a topic, and magic always happens. The major benefit of a good workshop is, of course, the training opportunity. In a year when we won't be able to get everyone to the UPA conference, workshops provide us with a low-cost alternative. But that's only the most obvious benefit.

Rettger, Mary Beth. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

Another Usability Tool: Marketing  

Discusses how working closely with marketing can improve usability.

Swartz, Andrew. Serco (2005). Articles>Usability>Collaboration>Marketing

Apples and Oranges

Usability and design are two fields that collide more often than not. But why is that? Why can’t we all just get along and center our efforts around delivering a better product, a top-notch Web site or a user-friendly interface. Everybody would benefit from an open-minded, reciprocal understanding. Right?

Hilhorst, Didier P. Digital Web Magazine (2004). Articles>Usability>Design>Collaboration

Can Collaboration Help Redefine Usability?    

There are countless usability blogs, message boards and listservers. But to my knowledge, no one has attempted to integrate all this information into a single, collaborative knowledge space. I believe that creating such a knowledge space would be of immense benefit to the usability profession and would be a wonderful platform on which to refine our understanding of social computing and knowledge management.

Kreitzberg, Charles B. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Usability>Help

CEOs and Usability

Talking to a CEO about usability can be wonderful or terrifying. The difference between raging success and total failure comes down to understanding exactly what the CEO needs to know and then adjusting your usability message to fit. This article explains how to understand various contexts, and in turn, how to position your usability message.

Rhodes, John S. and Daniel Szuc. Apogee (2006). Articles>Management>Usability>Collaboration

Agile Usability

RITE differs from a “traditional” usability test by emphasizing extremely rapid changes and verification of the effectiveness of these changes. Specifically, practitioners make changes to the UI (prototype or application) as soon as the problem is found and the solution spotted. Changes such renaming buttons, changing the text of menu items often happen before another participant arrives. More complicated, but obvious changes are made as rapidly as possible. This way the change can be tested as quickly as possible.

Levison, Mark. InfoQ (2008). Articles>Usability>Collaboration>Agile