Usability and finally hand
Summary:
Usability Measure and calculate impact economic business have traditionally been two tasks carried out independently. However, today we have a methodology that lets us know the return on investment made in the implementation of improvements to facilitate the use of systems and their impact on the income statement.
Usability Metrics business and finally come together.
Introduction:
services firms in recent years have been devoting efforts to optimize their processes, tending toward levels efficiency and effectiveness comparable to the processes of the industrial world.
The process improvement initiatives in service companies such as insurers, banks and telecom operators based on methodologies such as
Lean Management and Six Sigma
have experienced a boom. One of the commonalities of utilities with industrial enterprises is the high transaction volume, and alignment of performance indicators and efficiency. However
a long way to go. Noting the evolution of processes in business services, you realize that more and more as it flows along the chain of activities, to and from the client Ultimately, it is basically information, and less material or paper. And this information is concentrated the bulk of the total time of process control points occupied by user applications that create, modify and send information to other actors in the chain.
Obviously this is not black or white, as elsewhere, there are many exceptions and are sometimes located in areas of gray. We conclude that, in a process improvement initiative, especially in the world of services, optimizing the user interfaces over the activities, and is one of the key success factors.
traditional approach Usability
With a traditional approach is unreliable to quantify the economic impact of improvements in usability, since it lacks a global view of the whole process.
The centerpiece of services to improve user interfaces has traditionally been the task. That is, by way of example, if you decide to improve the operation of the online sales channel of a hotel chain, are identified and discussed the tasks that make these operations, and attack isolation. Measured performance parameters, efficiency and user satisfaction. Expert analysis is performed (heuristic) and improvement actions are taken with common sense and oriented to minimize errors and time of interaction, satisfaction and maximize the user experience.
's certainly not a bad approach and tend to get very satisfactory results that improve considerably the selected operational. Between before and after there is a quantum leap, and you can evolve this approach to more sophisticated levels, no doubt, but there is a limit.
The problem with this traditional approach is to NOT view the selected operational process. A process consists not only tasks but also by the part that lies between them, and can reach penalize the process (commonly called molting or waste), whether for example waiting times, or the accumulation of inventory between tasks.
The consequence of this limitation of the current approach is unreliable in quantifying the economic impact of improvements in usability. Analyzing task by task misses the process view, which is what really worries the organization.
Following the example of the sale of hotel rooms through the Internet, if you look at the metrics of the entire process flow, including flow is not perceived by users, you can find functions that relate to business variables process variables, including usability variables (the tip of the iceberg). Only the latter are now considered the traditional approach. By
process approach (vs. task focus) can find investment returns endorse efforts in usability, to be able to quantify small margin of error of savings or benefits of improvements implemented a process that develops over user applications. Lean
UPS: A new approach to usability projects
Lean UPS is able to find investment returns that support the efforts on improvements to facilitate the use of systems and their correlations with business variables.
Lean UPS (User Perception Services) is a quantitative methodology for process optimization based on ISO-9241 standards
(Usability) and WAI-UNE
(Accessibility) whose activities are mostly through user interfaces.
provides an objective assessment of Usability Business correlated variables (increase sales channels, reduce incidents, called Call Center, loyalty and link to customers, etc.).
In summary, the Lean approach goes beyond UPS Traditional usability, combining tools Lean Six Sigma methodology of usability techniques. This means that, with a very driven and a strong analysis component and process metrics are achieved
productivity gains, cost savings and increased revenue, applying not only improvements in usability, but also in operational efficiency. Lean Methodology UPS
David Rodriguez Gabaldon
Usability department responsible everis
