Usability, Scott Adams style

Here's another good strip about usability from Scott Adams. Some of his previous strips have described usability testing as well. It's interesting that he keeps working this topic.

What's a usability problem?

This Dilbert comic strip raises an excellent question that usability people often talk about. What constitutes a usability problem? The PHM says, "...a user might need several steps to do something that should only take one." Out of context of the application, it's impossible to answer that question. If the application is a payment form on an e-commerce site, then this situation may affect conversion rates by some percentage and lead to lost sales. If it's a desktop application that is complex and only intended to be used by trained users, than perhaps it's not an issue. Often there's disagreement among usability people whether a usability issue is a genuine "bug" or not.

Interesting that the PHM brings this up, because historically we know he doesn't really understand engineering or usability very well. I wonder where Scott Adams encountered this topic.

The rising popularity of working from home

This work-at-home thing seems to go in cycles, depending on how a company is doing financially. This article in BusinessWeek claims that companies are offering incentives for some workers to stay home and phone it in. Great picture, by the way--very apt. I work at home, and I don't miss the daily commute, or the office politics, one bit.

Keeping the others who inhabit the same space out of the office is sometimes an issue, as this Dilbert strip accurately depicts.

Telling stories in Second Life

Organizational cultures and sub-cultures was a big topic in my Org Behavior class this semester. Although people within companies often speak of "the company culture" which is determined by its executives, researchers typically find a variety of cultures within a single organization. Each culture has its own assumptions, values, and language, and the differences are sometimes sources of conflict.

Our project this semester was to shoot a video in Second Life that told an organizational story. My team's machinima video attempted to illustrate the differences between engineering and marketing cultures. This "culture clash" has been a rich source of material for Scott Adams, so we freely borrowed from the Dilbert strips, while providing narration based on academic research and our own experiences.

The video lacks in its execution, but was a nice learning experience. Videos like these would be a fast, cheap way to develop prototypes for new services. The prototypes could be viewed by potential customers and their feedback collected prior to giving the demos to managers. That's something I'd like to try to do some day.

Snow day

We had about 2 or 3 inches of snow last night and today. In central N.C., that means everything shuts down, including the universities. That's a lot different from, say, central Illinois, where it takes a blizzard to close schools and people are expected to make it to work on snowshoes. I missed my marketing class, which was a shame. I'm taking marketing and services management this semester in my MBA program at NC State. If every things goes according to plan I'll graduate in December.

Of course, not everyone thinks an MBA is the best way to improve one's life.

Personality testing pt. 3: let's get social

I thought I was finished with this topic. Then I saw a rather credulous interview in BusinessWeek.com with a CEO about his company's online personality test. According to the interviewee, "enlightened employers consider personality as only one facet of the selection process." This CEO was touting his online personality test as one of the selection criteria. If you follow the links far enough you can take the test. I did, and got a report that had a little more information than an average horoscope. To get the detailed report you need to pay.

The website turns out to be a social networking site where people can meet others of similar "temperaments." Good grief. I sincerely hope no one in an HR department would be foolish enough to adopt this thing as a selection criterion. I've written about personality testing before, and this does nothing to change my opinion.

I think Scott Adams was on the mark with his send up of personality testing in companies.

Personality testing pt. 2: the DPPI

In an earlier blog post I discussed the use and potential misuse of personality testing by companies. Specifically, the HR department may use personality testing for selection and placement in ways unintended by the creators of the tests.

It looks like I'm not the only one who feels that personality testing can be abused by HR.

Buzzword alert: innovation, incubator, value chain

Has anyone noticed that terms like "innovation," "incubator," and "value chain" have achieved buzzword status? I think Scott Adams noticed.

Scott Adams, blogger

I recently discovered Scott Adams' blog. Of course, Adams' comments on corporate culture in his Dilbert comic strip are delightful. His blog lets him range around a little more than the strip allows. Judging from the number of comments he gets to each posting, his blog is quite popular.

Apparently, the Dilbert comic strip really ticks some people off. A casino worker in Fort Madison, Iowa, was fired recently for posting a strip that referred to managers as "drunken lemurs." I would say that by firing the employee the casino management sort of proved the strip's point. No telling how lemurs felt about being compared to human managers.

Overcoming the "work at home" stigma

Surveys of office workers show that they tend to think that people who telecommute get away with murder. It really does not help when Scott Adams publishes cartoons that cruelly mock telecommuters. OK, so we work at home types don't dress up to go to the office, and we aren't distracted with constant interruptions. We're judged on our output rather than on appearance and schmoozing ability, and that's really a good thing.

Adams gave a nice interview on his experience with working at home. He's right about the eating part. It's really hard to stay out of the kitchen during the day.