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Raz Levinhar
Software Design Expert
Amdocs – Israel |
Usability: A nerdy version of the Samurai code
by Jesse Berkowitz
Amdocs is a global provider of software and services for billing and CRM systems. Over the last three years, Amdocs has invested nearly $400 million (USD) in the development of its product portfolio. This includes applications for billing, CRM, self-service, order management, mediation, and content revenue management.
Raz Levinhar began his stint at Amdocs as a programmer in 1999, before usability awareness began to spread. By his own admission, most developers didn't know much about usability. "We just got the customer requirements and started coding," he reflects. "Our design decisions were driven by technical factors, rather than being informed by end-user analysis. But we were smart enough to know our designs could be better."
| "The time we spend watching users perform translates into bottom-line revenue. It helps us develop products that better integrate with how people actually work and think. There's a real satisfaction and craftsmanship involved in usability – it's like a nerdy version of the Samurai code." |
Several years later, Raz made the transition from developer to functional designer and usability analyst.
"I felt like I had stopped learning new things as a programmer," he explains. "Usability seemed so interesting. It was a whole new world to me!"
Raz's first usability training course was taught by none other than HFI's CEO Eric Schaffer, and Raz earned his CUA credential in the fall of 2006. He has been delighted by the rapid growth of Amdocs' usability team, which now totals nearly fifty designers with a usability emphasis. Ten of those people are based in San Jose, another two reside in the UK, and nearly forty work from Israel.
"There are far more people talking about usability than before," observes Raz. "Our management team hears about the benefits from both employees and our clients.
"The highlight for me came recently when I was eating in a restaurant near our office. I overheard several developers arguing good-naturedly about usability best practices – which was amazing, because that never would've happened a few years ago. I had to restrain myself from going over and buying them all drinks."
Part of the reason usability has taken root at Amdocs is Raz's evangelizing. He coaches different development and testing groups and continually pushes to incorporate usability methods into the product lifecycle as early and as often as possible. Over time, awareness for usability has grown and more product teams have adopted it into their development life cycle.
Raz's repertoire of user-centered design techniques and offerings include: user interviews, business process analysis, methodic functional analysis and screen design, card sorting, wireframes, and usability consulting for Amdocs’ customers. He also enjoys the personal, interactive aspect of usability testing – though the geographically dispersed usability team is still grappling with ways to observe more users.
"The time we spend watching users perform translates into bottom-line revenue," says Raz. "It helps us develop products that better integrate with how people actually work and think. There's a real satisfaction and craftsmanship involved in usability – it's like a nerdy version of the Samurai code."
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