Eric's New Year's Resolutions for 2007

Now that usability is a major market force, let's apply that force in our business context.
Let's get the resources that we deserve so that we can ensure usability across products.
We have proven that we are worth it.

Dr. Eric Schaffer
CEO, Human Factors International, Inc.

	Let's resolve together for the coming year...
	I will work with methodology, templates, tools, and standards. Only an amateur reinvents each project from scratch.
	I will see that my whole team has the training and certification they need.
	I will see that 10% of the total development staff is comprised of usability professionals, not 1% trying frantically to prioritize and working nights.
	And looking to the future...
	Usability must adapt to the global marketplace. If you are working across cultures don't think your concepts, designs, or even methods apply universally. Usability engineers always have to adapt to their users, task flows, and environments. That is extra challenging going across cultures.
	We are all attuned to the issues of emotional design. We have made great progress in measuring these emotions and predicting their effects. At HFI we have the HFI PETScan™ (measuring Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust). But we are still lagging in the prescriptive data set. Some day if we want to create a sense of "solidity" or "belonging" we will need a clear get of guidelines to follow.
	Finally, it is time that usability practitioners move up the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) into the area of product, site, and application ideation. Our skills and perspective are most useful in coming up with ideas for new offerings. Instead of basing ideas on market demographics, intuition, or anecdotal evidence; we can base the concepts on an understanding of the prospective user's ecosystem.