The epiphany that gave birth to this blog
Written by April Cabello
“On the Internet, it’s survival of the easiest…. Give users a good experience and they’re apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But … it’s easy to turn to another supplier in the face of even a minor hiccup. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around.”
I just had to quote Jakob Nielsen for my first write-up for Talk Usability.
Yes, make this the official declaration that I am a Jakob Nielsen fan, despite what his critics are saying. As a testament to becoming a fan girl (albeit a geek one), I had to stop Nielsen on his tracks during the Usability Week 2007 in Hong Kong to make him sign my Usability Inspection Methods book authored by him.
C’mon people – you just have to admit it. No matter how radical the guy is about usability, he still popularized and evangelized both profession and practice.
And that… is what we’d also like to do.
Andoy and I eat and drink usability everyday.
That’s what we do. That’s how we live.
Our normal daily grind entails making sure products and services work for users…and that they work effectively.
On certain days, it’s a walk in the park. On most days, it can be complicated.
Quite the irony of things, isn’t it? For us to ensure that designs are easy to use, we oftentimes have to engage in the most grueling mental gymnastics.
Just to share with you the inception of this blog, it actually happened at a time that both Andoy and I were in the middle of a difficult and frustrating project. In the midst of ranting about how exasperating it can get to evangelize the usability practice, we wondered whether there are others out there like us who experience the same difficulties.
We know there are, but the intricacies of doing usability in a developing country are quite distinct and “special.” We are trying to overcome economic hurdles as well as debunking myths about usability being an expensive activity and a cause to slips in project timelines.
Right off the bat, there was a flash of light bulb in our heads.
Why not be more “out there” and find others like us (and I catch myself talking as if looking for extra-terrestrials)?
Thus, this blog was born.
We want to reach out to other usability practitioners, enthusiasts and engineers. We’d like to share insights and opinions about the practice.
We want to share our experiences as usability professionals – how it is to be in a profession like this in a developing country.
We want to speak the usability language in the vernacular. Yes, we promise to try to avoid geek-speak as much as we can.
Most important of all, we want to share the usability of everyday things.
So expect product reviews – both rants and raves. And no, we are not getting paid for it.
If you would like us to review a particular product or service, just let us know and we’ll see if we can look into it.
Let me close by welcoming our friends and colleagues to Talk Usability.
We’re looking forward to sharing this space with you – this is what we do and what we like doing.
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“Why not be more “out there” and find others like us (and I catch myself talking as if looking for extra-terrestrials)?”
i swear, it did sound like that hahaha! but as in Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come
congrats to this new baby!
Yes, I did think of that – thus, the comment.
Thanks for the continuous support!