BOOK TITLE: The Usability Business: Making the Web Work
PRICE: Amazon price £29.50
PAGES: 161 pages
AUTHORS: Joanna Bawa, pat Dorazio and Lesley Trenner (Editors)
PUBLISHER: Springer
PUBLICATION DATE: 2001
ISBN: 1-85233-484-3

This book provides a great deal of reports from the 'coal face'. There are numerous accounts of the difficulties encountered when dealing with organizational politics, adapting usability skills to work with new applications and to work within various development methodologies.

The book emphasizes the need for usability to be 'sold' to businesses by clearly identifying the business benefits of integrating usability into the product development cycle. Even those businesses that see the importance of usability need to be able to measure its effectiveness to justify the expenditure. For those nascent Usability Experts just emerging from academia, this is a very important lesson to absorb in order to ease smoothly into a fruitful professional career.

Interestingly as the hype and novelty wears off the Internet the issue arises of integrating a business's web offerings more closely with the other communication channels maintained by the business. This shows a more mature vision of the Internet as only one of a number of channels through which customers can experience a business/brand and that each channel should complement each other rather than each trying to be standalone. The customer experience is coloured by each of these communication channels and when managed well can enhance the overall brand reputation.

Time and again the importance of clarifying the scope of the Usability Expert(s) involvement is mentioned. It is a well-acknowledged problem within the profession that the Usability Professional's role can overlap with other team members. Without a formal discussion of the role of each team member it is very easy to 'stand on the toes' of other team members which inevitable leads to tension within projects. This lack of clarity about what Usability Professionals can provide can also lead to clients asking for work that is outside the remit of Usability Professionals. In this instance the advice of the book, which I agree with completely, is to defer to other professionals for those sections, such as brand experts, web designers, etc. I would sound a note of caution, however, to ensure the balance of power is tightly retained with the company originally contracted to do the work or there will be a dilution of control.

The political quagmire develops throughout the book, rearing its ugly head in case study after case study. Political 'buy-in' seems to be a key element in getting a project underway to provide the necessary clout. For me the most memorable phrase in the book is:
"Responsibility without power is an unenviable position in which to find oneself in any organization".

Effective and efficient communication with the other members of the development team is also key to highlight the benefits of having Usability in the development cycle. What really comes across from this book is how tough it can be as a Usability Professional: constantly having to prove your contribution is valuable; having to do battle with often hostile team mates who do not understand your presence on the project and having to twist yourself around various existing development methodologies to ensure at least a measure of usability gets included in the project.

I have to say that I was quite worn down by the time I had read this entire book. Although there are only 161 pages, each one seems to recount details of tough projects, disappointing outcomes, compromise and political wrangling. Having been in the usability business for many years I have experienced my share of hurdles, but I have also managed some very fruitful projects and retained some extremely happy clients. So, on the whole though the book is very revealing it would have been nice to see the case studies balanced with some more positive ones.

Review by:
Arlene Kline
Usability Specialist
The Usability Company
14 Bonhill Street
London
EC2A 4BX

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