Usability is not just a set of guidelines or rules. It is also a process; a method for improving things. Combine the guidelines and the process and you've got gold.
Here's the process in a nutshell:
1) Observe the task being performed (it's the first rule of good psychology: watch don't ask)
2) Look for issues
3) Brainstorm solutions
4) Implement
5) Observe task again
6) Iterate....rinse....spit...
Effectively a kind of hypothesis and trial-error blend.
Now, when we are talking the usability of computer systems we usually hope to observe and analyse people using the software we have designed (or a prototype). This then gives us insights into improving our designs and solutions.
When we are looking at improving the usability of our business processes, particularly our own working methods, it can be more difficult.
Let's start with the hard bit: you want to improve the usability of your own work processes. So, the tricky bit is how do you observe this. Well...let's have a think..
1) Self-observation: one method is to try to log the time you take on different activities in a typical day. The problem is this will interrupt your normal working patterns and the act of self-observation is likely to make you work a little differently and may get in the way of insights. Even with these issues, it is still better than no observation at all.
2) Automated observation: there are tools on the market, such as Time Snapper, that can take automatic snapshots and logs of your daily activity that you can then analyse after the fact. Very useful. The only issue is that this only captures your computer time and may miss vital 'offline' activities.
3) Observation by proxy - ask someone else to perform your tasks for a period of time (e.g. a junior or maybe even someone from a different department). Encourage them to think out loud about what they'd do and why. Get them to ask lots of questions. They get some training and insight into your work and you get a reminder that there are probably numerous other ways you could perform your tasks.
4) Self reflective observation - for every task, force yourself to ask 'why am I doing this?' and force yourself to note down the answer. Again, this will try to get you step back from process to the underlying goals.
5) Observation by proxy (2) - can you get the chance to watch an individual who does the same job role as you in another organisation to see how they work and their methods and why they do the things they do.
Whichever method you use, and I'm sure there are many more (or refinements of the above), the goal should be to start to get raw data for the following questions (the analysis stage)
1) What tasks do I typically do? Why?
2) Are these tasks regular tasks or 'one off tasks' - how frequently do they reoccur? How long do they actually take?
3) Which are the high importance tasks and which are the low importance tasks?
4) Which tasks are 'real' work and which are 'excise'? (i.e things that aren't what we actually want to be doing, but are necessary for us to do the tasks we do want to do)?
5) How many interruptions do we get? When? What sort?
6) What are the inputs into the work tasks? What are the outputs? What are the transformations/mappings?
7) How similar are tasks?
8) Which tasks have you self-chosen, which are you forced to do?
9) What are the dependencies between tasks?
10) How much time is spent searching for information to do the tasks?
11) How much time is spent as a result of issues or errors?
12) What tasks have the most room for error? Which are critical?
etc...
The analysis will be the start of your brainstorming for improvements. To help this, there are helpful way to display your answers to the questions...more to come....
