Thursday, November 20, 2008

Don't Push; Pull: Overcoming the Temptation to Teach
Presenter: Kris Engdahl

Transitioning from technical writing to usability work requires reversing the flow of information. It doesn’t go from the development team through you to the user anymore; it goes from the user through you to the development team.

It’s easy, when you are interacting with users of a product that you understand well, to want to explain to them how something works. Doing so, however, cheats you out of the information that you want to get from them: how they expect the product to work and why.

Sometimes teaching is appropriate during a usability activity. For example, there are times when you provide training at the beginning of a usability test. But there are other times when providing information is exactly what you don’t want. This presentation will discuss:

• Why the urge to teach is so strong, especially in the technical writing community
• How that urge manifests itself in interactions with users
• Sneaky teaching: How we teach when we are not trying
• Ways to avoid teaching when you want to be learning

The meeting includes a tour of the new Usability Lab at Bentley.

Kris Engdahl is a Usability Consultant at Bentley’s Design and Usability Center. She worked as a technical writer for 15 years before moving full time to Usability in 2005. She has worked on a variety of products ranging from solutions for very technical users, including Web programmers and database administrators, to products for business users and consumers.

Prior to joining Bentley, Kris spent 12 years at Oracle Corporation, where she worked on enterprise-level business applications. Kris’ recent projects have included a large study of enterprise data needs, developing profiles for enterprise users from IT professionals to business executives, developing personas for a loan-related website, conducting mobility studies of seniors, and testing web sites that support teens as they prepare for their futures.

Kris holds an MS in Human Factors from Bentley College. She is active in the Usability Professionals’ Association, for which she designed a special exhibit that illustrated usability principles to children on World Usability Day at Boston’s Museum of Science.

Networking and Tours of Usability Lab	6:30 - 7:00 pm
Presentation and questions followed by tours of the Usability Lab (time-permitting)	7:00 - 8:30 pm

Bentley College (pay attention to SIG location; they vary)
Smith Academic Technology Center, Room 223
175 Forest Street, Waltham MA 02452
Map and Directions
Note: Please print the parking permit, which is downloadable from the Map and Directions page.

STC-Boston and STC-NNE members	Free
Other STC members and nonmembers	$5

Please register online for this meeting by November 18.

If you have questions about the Usability SIG, contact Usability SIG coordinator Ed Drohan, or contact Kevin McCauley.