Day 25 - Visit to Bentley University

Today was my first interview in Boston. The meeting started at 12 noon before we went to grab some lunch. My meeting today was with Bill Albert, Executive Director of the Design and Usability Center, Bentley University. Bill was a contact that I received from Charles Mauro of New Mauro New Media when I was in New York.

Entry to Bentley University Campus

The initial meeting that I had with Bill was in his office and again I recorded the session. At first I had outlined my background and the work that I was aiming to achieve with the Churchill Fellowship. After that I then turned on the recording to get an understanding of Bill's background and his work in the area of Human Factor Engineering and User Experience. His initial work was in Geography and he was interested in the intersection of Geography and cognitive psychology and came across the field of spacial cognition. 


He spent a lot of time working in this space then began work on navigation systems that  required minimal attention, as in car systems. So a driver can obtain the necessary details without being distracted. After completing his work in this area he stumbled upon the area of usability and found that it aligned quite well to what he had been doing in cognitive psych and human factors. He was also interested in perception, cognition and behaviour and the relationship that goes on in these areas. He then moved into the web in its initial days and learn't a lot in the area of usability and design.


Later moving on to the research side and focused in on the data but looking at the research methods for usability and being able to demonstrate the true business value. Usability has for quite a while been more focused on the qualitative and the area of quantitative research was a field that he worked on with Tom Tullis. Between them they wrote a book called Measuring the User Experience. 

Book Written by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert

Bill works closely and teaches with Tom his work at Bentley is building revenue to the university in the capacity of a consultancy business. Providing services mostly to the fortune 500 companies on all sorts of matters of usability, user experience research helping to advice them on building technology to be easy and intuitive. The other goal is to train graduate students, he is responsible for running one of the largest UX (User Experience) graduate programs in the US and has more that 100 graduate students. A small percentage of those students work in the centre with real clients gaining both experience with real world clients, products and services. For this they receive a small hourly payment as well as the experience and building industry knowledge and networks. 


One of the questions I asked was the difference in designing for tablets to desktop. My assumption to date had lead me to believe there is a difference. But from the UX perspective there is no real difference in the approach and the way that UX specialist work. The difference is more the use of UX and the developers that design systems are not necessarily knowledgeable about this area of work. Many developer make the assumptions based on their experience which does not reflect any understanding of UX and the requirements to delivery on that experience.


Poor information architecture and navigation will always create the same problems no matter what format the system is delivered on.  As Bill pointed out that the emergence of mobile technology for the delivery of these systems has forced the issue and need for proper UX work is needed. The Apple/Google effect has raised the bar and there is less tolerance for bad design. Now that people are experiencing better design products it has raised the bar to what we will accept. 


An interesting example that Bill highlighted was with some work he was involved with Fidelity a usability lab in the mid 90's. They quickly realise or made a connection between usability issues and support costs. They found that people were calling up for various reasons that they might not have called up if they were able to locate the information they required. The realise that every word counts and that there were savings if they designed their site better and made it easier for the client. They found it resulting in savings a real business saving in phone calls.


I then queried at what stage they get involved in projects. Bill indicated that they still get calls from clients about to go to market and wanting to get sign off from a usability perspective. In some cases they are able to add value and also inform the client it would have been better for the project as a whole if they were involved at the start and not the end. In some cases they don't do the work as they are not able to add a demonstrative value to the project. This situation has improved and more and more clients don't really need to understand that this work can produce savings and a return to the business. 


Clients that do leave it to the end usually learn the hard way. But basically the point from the usability aspect is that if the customer can't buy or use your service which can be demonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively then there is a problem. Usability is no longer a service that needs selling and businesses are starting to understand the value and benefits.


After this discussion we then went on a quick tour of the usability labs that they had. One was a one person arrangement with a computer and screen and a number of cameras around the room, with a second room behind a mirror for the staff carrying out the assessment. The second lab similar in style but designed for multiple users and mobile devices with a digital camera in the ceiling that can focus on the screen in high fidelity quality.


We then went to lunch in the cafeteria, where Bill introduced me to one of his students and a number of other colleges. 


Signing off 10:30pm