Tips for Usability Professionals in a Down Economy
Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2009, pp. 60-69
Article Contents
Tip #3: Deepen Your Usability Skills
Some usability people get "stuck in a rut," always using the same methods for every project. If the only tool on your tool-belt is a hammer, everything starts looking an awful lot like a nail. Employers value people who have an array of methods at their disposal and who apply the right ones to each situation.
None of us knows everything there is to know about usability. Techniques keep improving, new tools and techniques are constantly being developed, and our knowledge base keeps growing. The following are some ways of enhancing your usability skills:
- Read a usability book you haven't read before. New usability books are coming out all the time. Just last year, new books or editions came out on moderating usability tests (Dumas & Loring, 2008), improving the usability of Web forms (Jarrett & Gaffney, 2008), usability testing (Rubin & Chisnell, 2008), and usability metrics (Tullis & Albert, 2008). That's not even counting a host of new books on design. Start a "usability-book-of-the-month" discussion group at your company or in your local area.
- Take advantage of free or inexpensive Web-based seminars, such as the virtual seminars from User Interface Engineering (www.uie.com) or the Webinars from Human Factors International (www.humanfactors.com).
- Attend relevant conferences, especially the UPA conference. Unfortunately, many organizations cut back on conference travel in tight times. If that happens to you, try to make some kind of deal to still attend (e.g., agree to make a presentation summarizing key things you learned at the conference; pay your own travel if they will pay the registration).
- Consider going back to school. Is it necessary to have an advanced degree to succeed in the usability field? Absolutely not. But in tight times, an employer looking to hire a usability person is probably going to favor a candidate with a Master's degree over a candidate who doesn't have one, other factors being similar. There's an excellent list of graduate programs on the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Website: http://www.hfes.org/Web/Students/grad_programs.html.
- Keep up on publications in the field. There's an ever-growing number of publications in this field. Try to keep up with at least some of them, such as this one, the Journal of Usability Studies (http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/jus_home.html). If you can't attend the annual UPA conference, get the conference proceedings on CD (available from the UPA store). Subscribe to free newsletters that summarize recent usability findings, such as the UI Design Newsletter from Human Factors International (http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/usability-newsletter.asp), Usability News from the Software Usability Research Lab (SURL) at Wichita State University (http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/), UIE Tips from User Interface Engineering (http://www.uie.com/uietips/), and Jakob Nielsen's AlertBox (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/).
Even more important than just learning about some new usability techniques is actually applying them. Watch for appropriate opportunities to try out some of the new tools on your tool-belt.