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Lori Yaverbaum
Manager,
Web Usability & Technologies
Commonwealth Financial Network |
Silence is golden for this usability expert—it's what you don't hear that lets you know you're successful
by Jesse Berkowitz and Jean Greco
Lori Yaverbaum is the manager of Web Usability & Technologies for Commonwealth Financial Network, the nation's second-largest privately held independent broker/dealer.
Lori has held her current position for nearly four years but has always had a knack for usability. She got started on the usability track at Fidelity Investments, where she developed a Web-based information system to help telephone representatives handle customer inquiries more efficiently (Lori had previously been a phone rep herself).
At Commonwealth, Lori has overseen usability projects for an extranet redesign, application development, corporate Web site enhancements, and a new intranet rollout. Lori's 7-person team has been instrumental in the creation of a "Proposal Wizard" tool that lets financial advisors generate sophisticated reports for clients in a matter of minutes. They've also created a program called EasySite that allows the advisors to design, develop, and implement their own Web sites without having to do any coding.
After completing HFI's Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) training, Lori found it easier to demonstrate the value of usability to management. "Early on I had to overcome a perception that taking time to understand users would slow down development. But I'm lucky because our organization has really embraced usability. Our CIO is fully supportive because he's seen the impact we've had on the end product for our customers."
Commonwealth is now well on its way to institutionalizing usability and making it a core aspect of development. Not to say it isn't challenging…
| "The easier something is to use, the harder it was to design" |
"The easier something is to use, the harder it was to design," says Lori. "Every day in usability is a constant puzzle. You're always searching for what will work best because there's never just one answer. It's like a chess game: you have to be planning 10 to 15 moves ahead to know what your opponent (or in this case, the user) is thinking."
And Lori is a big fan of user testing, where she works closely with Business Analysts and Web developers through two phases of feedback sessions followed by additional testing.
"I love it when a test participant says something totally obvious that you hadn't thought of yourself," she says. "But it's also great when you're testing and no one makes a peep – and you know your design has worked. That's when silence is golden!"
Those types of moments can be the ultimate gratification for a usability analyst, who typically does much of her work behind-the-scenes. "Often the product we've created is the 'star,' and we're off in the wings," says Lori. "But usability experts are definitely the unsung heroes."
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