Maybe I'm interpreting this discussion wrong, but it seems to be belittling the value of effectiveness and efficiency. Regardless of whether a product (read: product or service) provides the user with some level of satisfaction, it is better that it be effective and efficient than not. If a company that has previously paid little or no attention to any of the stated aspects of usability (and this seems to be a significant proportion of the marketplace) brings in someone to improve efficiency and effectiveness, the products will become more effective and efficient. This is almost certainly a positive outcome.
Is it as good as if satisfaction was also addressed? Of course not. The more factors impacting user experience that are addressed, the better the product. Someone calling themselves a user experience professional could easily bash a usability professional for "only" addressing effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. This is where I find semantic arguments over the definition of usability not particularly useful. What really matters is which parts of the constellation of factors impacting user experience are addressed, not which label is applied to some arbitrary subset of those factors. I do think these discussions highlight something important though, which is the increasing recognition of the importance of a wide range of factors that impact the quality of a product. This is leading to broadening definitions of usability, IA, and IxD to be more encompassing of the whole experience. If you ask any particular usability professional, IA or IxD what they do, my guess is the answers would be very similar, whereas in the past that might not have been the case. -- A different Todd > BTW, I don't like it anymore than you that these people are doing > usability work. In fact, I'm rather bothered by it. But it is a > reality that it is happening and we need to be conscious of it. The > fact that you don't consider them professionals says something about > your confidence in their ability to do this work well, at least that > would be my interpretation. And with that I would agree. > > > Cheers! > > Todd Zaki Warfel > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
