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The recent discussion about proving to managers/programmers that better
documentation is necessary has included several suggestions that
technical writers perform usability tests, which makes me more than a
little nervous.
First, I don't think I'm qualified. Usability professionals usually have
psychology degrees and various other credentials which I don't have and
don't wish to obtain. I would never assume that a usability professional
had the skills and desire to do technical writing or editing, and I hope
it isn't assumed that technical writers want to or can manage to do any
usability testing, although I find both the process and the results
valuable to the work I do.
Second, usability tests are pretty complicated animals, involving several
rooms, video cameras, a lot of prior organization, more patience, and
fewer sarcastic remarks than I tend to output in a day's work. Usability
professionals work full-time at their jobs and have to deal with all sorts
of problems like user recruitment and properly analyzing all the data that
those users then give them. Usability tests can also be very expensive,
and while they pay for themselves multiple times over by lessening user
confusion and tech support, it's may be a huge chore to convince anyone of
that fact, and therefore they don't seem useful as a tool to bring already
stubborn managers or programmers over to "our side."
I do sometimes perform very basic, very informal usability evaluations.
These usually consist of finding someone that doesn't know the software
that I'm documenting very well, asking him or her to perform a few tasks,
and evaluating how quickly and easily (or not) he or she is able to do
so. I usually do these during a draft stage of a document, and I find
them very helpful.
Is this the kind of thing that is being referred to on the list, or are
technical writers out there being asked to perform actual usability
tests? It really seems like a leap out of the tech writer job
description.
