ForUSE - Designing for Breakthroughs in User Performance – Gennine Strope

More raw notes...

Case study in Usage Centred Design meets Agile in making management software for nurses.

Brainstorm User Roles
Mapping roles
Brainstorming tasks
Prioritising tasks

Some mistakes made where profiling wasn't thorough enough and goal directed design wasn't thought through well enough. These guys had something like 20 'severity 1' usability flaws still, after 20 sets of user tests. No design lead time, straight into engineering. This is supposed to be selling us on XP and Usage centred design and so far I'm feeling like it's telling us that if you measure success by user comprehension and understanding, this just didn't stack up well. However, she's touting this as having shaved 4-6 hours on training nurses on the old system. But cripes! What must their old system have been like?

Lots of people say small design teams are best... so does she. Basically advocates contextual design. Keep statistics! (good, something new... I was scared there'd be nothing to think about from this) proof of the progress within the business. Return on Investment must be measured for justifying to management.

She's got a 'pocketfull of wisdom!' omigod, that's slightly nauseating... as is the powerpoint sound effects.