CUA of the Month – April, 2013

Jeff Wilbur
"Communicating what the issues are has been very effective in building credibility. Tthe overall process one gets from CUA training has been extremely helpful."
 
Jeff Wilbur
Certified Usability Analyst
Chevron

Implementing Usability in a Large Corporation

by Jim Garrett

Our Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) of the Month is Jeff Wilbur. Jeff has been at Chevron® for thirty-one years and is part of a relatively small usability team of five, all of whom are CUAs from Human Factors International (HFI). Their assignment: to institutionalize usability within the Chevron IT culture.

Jeff, what is your title and role at Chevron?

My job title is Certified Usability Analyst. I work in Chevron’s Information Management Company in the UX (User Experience) Team. This year we are focused on improving organizational capability through user-centered design practices. We’re doing that for the entire IT function throughout the company.

Who are the users you are targeting?

We are focusing on applications for our internal end-users. Chevron has over 57,000 employees around the world. Our organizational capability effort is to build up the competency of the people that are going to be playing a key role in improving usability for our internally-facing solutions.

Can you give an example of some of the projects that you’re going to launch and what some of the usability work will be?

One is that we’re going to be updating the software in our conferencing application that we use throughout the company to conduct remote meetings. We will assess which product options work best from the usability perspective. Obviously there’ll be lots and lots of other criteria but usability will be one of them.

Are there any other projects either current or upcoming you’ll be working on?

We just wrapped up a project working with the group that introduced smart devices to the company in order to connect our global workforce. They wanted us to come up with usability standards, processes and design patterns. In addition, we needed to figure out how to integrate usability work into an agile software development methodology.

The company does technical architectural reviews for IT projects and our corporate CIO decided that usability should be included in these architectural reviews. This was exciting because it says our leadership is really supporting usability. Sharon Allen, our first HFI CUA, was a lead author on assembling materials to help architects recognize what a good usability effort looks like. It involved laying out some simple practices – user-centered design practices, especially about understanding users – and evaluating how well the solution works. I think this is going to make a big difference.

As a matter of fact, I just talked to a project lead whose project was held up because the architectural reviewer saw that no usability work had been done. He contacted me and we walked him through the appropriate usability activities. The other day he showed us his work and he did a great job. He even hung out in his users’ offices to watch them do their work. He came away with a much better understanding of his users, their tasks, and their working environment.

So management is on board with institutionalizing usability in the company?

They are. Our vision is to weave usability into the existing fabric of our IT application deliver process. We’ve got to start somewhere so we’re going to get teams to do simpler things first then raise the bar gradually. We’ve seen that approach work in other company programs.

What do you think was the most significant thing that you’ve learned in your CUA training?

I think it might be the importance of observation as opposed to asking users if something is usable – to be evidence-based. The training gave us a foundation in how to be evidence-based. It has come in handy for me. I can recall being in meetings where I could just sort of calmly say “Well you know, based on the user behavior we saw in our usability testing, I’d be really worried about that alternative.” The other folks in the meeting have actually said “Oh, you researched that. OK, let’s not do it that way then.”

In your observation with the users, what kind of feedback do you get from their satisfaction and increased ease of use?

Typically when we are engaged with a project the satisfaction increases fairly significantly. We’re also looking at how effective it is for them and at the process error rates. I think almost uniformly users love it. I’ve heard so many people say, “I’m so glad that you’re paying attention to all this.”

Has anything surprising come up for you in any of your usability or testing work?

Often you think something is a good idea but it ends up not testing very well. That definitely happens. Also, sometimes you think to yourself there’s going to be a problem with a certain feature and it turns out to work fine. So that happens too.

What insights do you feel make for more effective observing?

One of the things that come to mind is being careful as you’re observing not to draw too many conclusions or inferences right away, but simply watch and see what is actually happening. Later you’ll draw conclusions, but if you can put that aside until after you’ve seen and recorded or understood what they did, the results will be more objective.

Has there been something from CUA training you’ve been able to apply to your work where you’ve seen some significant results?

Well, it’s definitely the usability testing and reporting it. I would say communicating what the issues are has been very effective in building credibility. I would say also the overall process one gets from the training has been extremely helpful.

What would you say to somebody thinking of taking the CUA training?

I would recommend they take it if they’re interested in working in the user experience area. However, you can’t just take it and forget it; you need to apply it, practice it and keep learning through continuing education.

Thank you, Jeff, for demonstrating the power of a small, well-trained usability team to have far reaching influence in a large corporate icon such as Chevron. We are pleased to announce Jeff Wilbur as HFI’s Certified Analyst of the Month.

The statements and comments provided herein are only the opinions of Jeff Wilbur, and do not necessarily represent those of Chevron, its management, or any of Chevron’s affiliates.

CUA of the Month

Each month we highlight the successes and achievements of a different member of our CUA community. If you are a Certified Usability Analyst and would like to be considered for CUA of the Month recognition, please send a brief professional bio to hfi@humanfactors.com

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