Pope, Usability and Donald Rumsfeld
We’re talking Alexander Pope, not the newly installed Benedict XVI. One of Nick Gould’s (CEO of Catalyst Group) favorite quotes is “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” uttered at some point by the urbane 18th century author of “The Rape of the Lock,” among other works. Pope could well have been talking about the practice of user-centered design in the twenty-first century. Specifically, he might have been thinking of one aspect of the same debate that inspired the “End of Usability Culture” essay way back when in Digital Web Magazine (see our earlier post on all this). That is, part of the angst associated with trying to determine what usability is, or is not, comes from anxiety about the way clients perceive it. Various parties within the industry, including Cofactors, have observed that usability has penetrated a certain way into corporate America, if not very far.
Another way of looking at all this is to observe that at this point, there are a fair number of people around who have at least heard of usability, user interface design or information architecture. The problem is that, although that number is far larger than it was five years ago, the actual amount of comprehension of this set of services is arguably not correspondingly deeper. Hence, back to Mr. Pope’s observation. There’s a broader spread of a little knowledge - and this has made it in some respects more difficult to practice this profession. Many people now know just enough about user-centered design to get themselves and their consultants into trouble. And this has proven distracting for the profession, which is under pressure to be as well understood as possible, in order to grow. Firms and practitioners wonder: should we call ourselves something different, or be something different? And it’s hard to answer, because the business context for our expertise shifts so rapidly.
Now, this is in keeping with the progress of any meme or idea through a culture. There’s a continuum from ignorance to familiarity of some kind, assuming something stays visible. And this progression is a better sign for the practice than there still being widespread ignorance of an internet-critical profession ten years after the World Wide Web appeared. But it’s still frustrating to encounter a level of familiarty that betokens limited self-understanding. A large number of people know what the accounting profession is, or have some idea to what set of skills that designation applies. But of that set of people, there are a very large number who also know what they do not know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld. When discussing accounting with accountants, they won’t assume they know better, just because they can balance a checkbook. User centered design is not yet at that stage, for better or worse. Ultimately, we at Cofactors think this is a small price to pay for the privilege (no, we are not being sarcastic) of doing this for a living. But we felt Pope’s comment was apropos, because it helps keep things in perspective, as we explain the necessity of undergoing a requirements gathering phase to yet another client.
