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"Usability" experts help tame high technology

By Victor Godinez
The Dallas Morning News

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Paul Sherman is a technology worker, and he can't stand personal computers.

"The PC is probably one of the most unusable pieces of technology out there," he said. "We've had to bend and change our mental models to adapt to this really odd piece of technology."

But that is Sherman's job — finding clunky technologies such as the PC and coming up with ways to make them easier to use.

Sherman is a usability professional. Demand is rising for the workers who make technology more intuitive and less intimidating.

Sherman, Dallas area manager for Perceptive Sciences, said usability experts work in a variety of industries. "You'll find usability professionals in medical-technology organizations, in telecom," he said. "You'll find them in Web and e-commerce companies."

Whitney Quesenbery, president of the Usability Professionals' Association (www.upassoc.org), said financial-services firms also are adding usability experts.

"One of the great labs is at Fidelity (Investments) in Boston," she said. "They looked around and said, 'Who buys mutual funds for retirement? They're older. We need to figure out how we serve older adults on the Web.' "

Sherman said, "There's no guild or brotherhood or really too many training programs in usability. You come to it by this ideological fervor and this desire to make devices more usable."

He said some usability experts have degrees in psychology, marketing or computer-science but just as many have liberal-arts backgrounds.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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