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Mary M. Michaels
Senior Web Project Manager
McGraw-Hill Education |
The usability buzz—even better than caffeine
by Jesse Berkowitz
"Usability is a mindset," says Mary Michaels. "I even think like a usability analyst when I'm using the token machine at the train station. It's a passion."
Talk about the "fast track" to success.
Mary's background in art*, education and business, coupled with her natural desire to improve things, all came together in her current role within Global Technology Solutions.
| "Usability is such an important part of being customer-focused. Customers aren't sitting at meetings with developers and stakeholders, so somebody has to represent their needs" |
"Usability is such an important part of being customer-focused. Customers aren't sitting at meetings with developers and stakeholders, so somebody has to represent their needs."
However, Mary is fully aware of the constraints she must work within.
"You can't go overboard trying to stand up for the user to the point where you alienate everybody else—designers, developers, business sponsors, and management. I try to be realistic about how much usability work is appropriate for a given project. I prefer the label goal-directed design instead of user-centered design. This conveys the message that it helps all of our stakeholders meet their shared goals."
With that idea in mind, Mary and some of her colleagues started a cross-departmental special interest group at McGraw-Hill called the User Experience Initiative (UXI). They hold conference calls each month to share information and plan how usability can support company goals. They even built a UXI intranet site that features articles and resources, along with examples from recent/ongoing usability projects at McGraw-Hill Education, which is the premier provider of teaching and learning solutions for the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, higher education, and professional markets.
Mary also finds that the CUA credential spurs interest in usability. Her Higher Ed colleagues got a major boost when a vice president mandated that usability be part of every media technology project. Mary has also advocated integrating goal-directed design into their current methodology for software development.
"Usability and software development aren't divergent or competing methodologies," she comments. "If you meld usability activities into several places throughout the process, it's more effective than just doing a usability test at the end, when problems are expensive to fix."
Mary has also made inroads by promoting the objective aspects of usability.
"I try to distinguish between opinion and science," Mary says. "Oftentimes people make design suggestions based solely on personal preference. Having the CUA credential helps me justify the rigorous methods and research behind our design decisions. My HFI course manuals are still a wonderful reference—I get a ton of knowledge out of them."
Mary and her colleagues use several methods to gather user feedback, including usability testing as well as online surveys. They conduct both direct and indirect testing to gauge the importance of specific usability issues across representative audiences.
But regardless of the project, Mary's enthusiasm is always apparent.
"Usability is such a wonderful field," she remarks. "You're like an anthropologist, digging deeper to discover how people do things, how they think about their tasks, and how they try to achieve their goals. Taking a system that your team built, testing it with real users, and seeing how it actually works is exhilarating. The feedback is like gold."
"I love my job so much I don't even need to drink coffee."
*Mary's landscape paintings in pastel are currently on display in the conTEMPORARY Gallery at the Arts Council of Princeton. To see her work, visit:
https://web47.mysecureserver.com/artscouncilofprincetonorg/spr06_Michaels.htm
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