Teaching Usability

Notice: I'm starting the merging process of phark.net and this weblog — and what better way to do it than to bring over some of the more popular posts on my other blog to this one. The following posts (and subsequent posts this coming week) will be from my other weblog. Enjoy!

It seems as though there aren't any viable ways to prepare yourself for a career in the "user experience" industry. There are a plethora of schools that offer graduate degrees in one form of the discipline or another, but what about the four years prior to that? What undergraduate programs can sufficiently provide someone with knowledge about all of this? It's a tough answer.

As an Information Technology student, I'm expected to know my way around hardware and network adapters, databases, programming languages, and, of course, HTML. I took the very atypical route of not engrossing myself in the physical transfer of information (aka networking), nor the storage of information (database design), but rather the means by which it is communicated across mediums. I believe this provided a good grounding in the many ways that people pull information from technology — leading me right to my main area of expertise, the user experience.

But you really can't teach that connection to a youngling IT student. Most IT undergrads are concerned with how amazing their video card is, how many processors they can run in parallel, how many computers they have in their dorm room, and so on. Teaching a "soft subject" like usability is very difficult because the interest level just isn't there yet. There is no real way to force someone to become interested in this subject, it just happens.

If you are a graphic design major, interested in the user experience, you don't get exposed to usability testing nor the tech-side to the field with your core classes. You learn the art of visual communication (essential to user interaction design) but skimp on the coding skills necessary for prototyping. It seems as though there is no real middle ground.

The best bet would be to adopt a hybrid-IT program — one where usability and user-centered design principles are discussed, along with visual interaction design and communication fundamentals. This is what I'm trying to accomplish here at RIT.

I am an IT major with a minor in Mass Communications. I have taken all undergraduate and graduate IT courses that have anything to do with user-centered design and usability. I have stacks of books on my desk that deal with user experience, their interaction with technology, and the flow of information to and from their brain (ergonomics, visual processing, cognitive neuroscience, etc.). To better my knowledge, all those books have been read, re-read, analyzed, written about, highlighted, and studied diligently.

So can you really teach usability to an undergraduate student? Yes and no. Professors can give them a good grounding in the field, but they need to take extra steps in order to really prepare themselves for life after college.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Comments

[Grant]

I absolutely agree with you about what interests the majority of IT/IS/MIS students. I was one of them. However, after 4 years of actually working in IT I have come to realize how important the user-centered design process is. Most of the Web-based applications I've seen that did not incorporate this process were forced into several re-designs. I wish I was made aware of this during my college years, although in all honestly, I'm not sure how much of it I would have taken to heart. I guess seeing is believing.

[Mike]

It's unfortunate that so many companies are learning *just now* what happens when you ignore the user. The good side is that big business types who don't know web standards and usability from a hole in the ground will start to listen to usability pros.

Hopefully, because of this, usability engineers and information architects will have more of an impact on projects and in organizations.

[Nicole]

"Most IT undergrads are concerned with how amazing their video card is, how many processors they can run in parallel, how many computers they have in their dorm room, and so on."

This description sounds way more like Computer Science or Computer Engineering undergrads -- not the general IT/IS/MIS student. :)

Also, on the subject of usability, I think a usability or HCI emphasis or concentration is a good option to have available to students. I also like the idea of requiring at least one usability course in the standard CS curriculum.

However, I must say that more than that would have been annoying to me. I appreciated the HCI course I took and it gave me a new perspective (and I have sought out more information since then), but I honestly was more concerned with taking Software Engineering, Data Structures, Database Management, and other programming courses. But, then, that could be the CS talking and IS and CS are two different beasts.

[Mike]

Typically, CS students are the smarter of the two evils (CS vs. IT). Not only are CS students thinking about their video cards and playing Unreal Tourney 24/7, they also have to do real work.

Yes, at RIT, the IT major is a joke. Well, for me it is. In our major we only have a 75% retention rate from Freshman to Sophomore... so maybe it was just easy for me. I do know that Java I, II, and III kicked some of my friend's butts our freshman year, but not mine.

We currently don't have an official HCI undergraduate concentration, however we do have two required HCI courses — Human Factors, and Interface Design (HF as a pre-req). There is a graduate concentration in HCI, however it's scope isn't large enough to give some a true "handle" on the industry.

We are starting an HCI Graduate program here within the next year, so I'm really looking forward to taking those classes.

[Honus]

I loathe our local CS majors. We don't have an IT major or anything really technical. Here we have CS and ECI (ECI = Economic Crime Investigation; it's supposed to be CS + Criminal Justice). All I have to say is that I have seen some really crappy web design, some really crappy coding, and some really crappy attitutdes of our local CS people. They seem convinced of their knowhow, but they really have NO CONNECTION to anything useful. Least of all, they do not know how to speak to users, how to get down to their levels. "I have people skills! What is wrong with you people??!!??" (Name the movie for a cookie).

It's all well and good to be able to code PHP, HTML, CSS, Perl etc, but when your user wants things to look pretty and work better, you have to adapt. At least you get that - cause our CS guys certainly don't.

The better ones can actually code themselves out of a hole in the ground, but the solution almost always looks like garbage.

They also are known to have the worse know-it-all approach to things. I can't tell you how many times I've had to do things myself after they come asking me for advice, and then not listening to it because of some superiority complex. Yeah, I'm a BIO MAJOR, but yeah, I understand PROCESS. You don't start with the most difficult solution - that's just stupid.

This concludes our broadcast day.

[Nicole]

I'm assuming, Honus, that you are talking about the CS majors at your school?

Otherwise that would be quite the generalization.

[Mike]

Honus sticking his foot in his mouth? That's nothing new ;)

[Matthew Oliphant]

I'll comment later, but for now:

http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue31.htm

[honus]

I loathe our local CS majors.

Come on... I even spelled it out - LOCAL. I only make generalizations about UC people. And I do know people who are pretty decent here - they're not all backwards.

I'm sure RIT people are better - after all they've got Mike Rundle.

[Nicole]

Yes, Honus, I did read that. It's just that after two paragraphs of using a simple "they" pronoun, I wasn't sure. :)

[Mike]

Don't mind Honus, he's harmless :)

[Honus]

Harmless my foot! I've got nasty big pointy teeth!

Oh come on.... pronouns aren't VAGUE!!!!

(ooops...)

[Grant]

"This description sounds way more like Computer Science or Computer Engineering undergrads -- not the general IT/IS/MIS student. :)"

Nicole - Not here in Silicon Valley. =) MIS majors, at least the ones I knew and went to school with, were pretty into their computer setups and were pretty geeked out like me.

[Nicole]

"geeked out"

Grant, I think you may have just coined my new favorite phrase.

[Mike]

See, the geeks that are IT here are sometimes the ones who couldn't handle the CS curriculum/coding. I'm not one of those transfer guys — I'm IT through and through :)

[Jakob]

Usability is something that has finally come to light at my college. Dare I say that a masters in Instructional Technology is on the horizon, something they have been working to put in place for quite some time. Caring about usability is indeed something that just happens...I know for one I never got into it until my final years of college, when it dawned on me that while my pages and creations were accessible to 95% of the world, it was arrogant of me to assume the remaining 5% didn't matter.

Now if only the campus web design team could see that...
http://www.csumb.edu

(be afraid of that link... it has been known to scare many people who have chosen to make a profession of web design)

[Mike]

"...it dawned on me that while my pages and creations were accessible to 95% of the world, it was arrogant of me to assume the remaining 5% didn't matter."

That's a fantastic quote, Jakob, and I'm glad that you jumped head-first into accessibility that way.