London: Panel discussion: The knowledge gap (Thursday 16 March)
This month's event brings together a panel of trainers and educators to discuss what students should expect from their courses. Is it time to re-write the book on training?
These days, there are many training options for people entering the field of usability or advancing within it. Courses range from higher university degrees to one-off workshops.
- But do they offer the right skills and experience for the roles usability professionals are expected to play?
- Is a degree in HCI really the best preparation for a career in usability?
- Is there a need for an accreditation and certification programme?
Event report
UK UPA Meeting: Panel discussion: The knowledge gap
Microsoft London, 16 March 2006
This panel session addressed the topic that there are many training options in the field of HCI or usability from one-off workshops to higher degrees The panel discussed how such courses are run, the tutor’s experiences of them and whether they provide good preparation for a career in the field.
The panel was chaired by Giles Colborne (UPA President) and consisted of trainers and educators:
Ann Blandford – tutor and lecturer at the UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) running an MSc course ‘HCI with Ergonomics’.
William Hudson - an independent trainer and co-founder of Syntagm.
Helen Sharp – from The Open University (OU) and co-author of "Interaction Design: Beyond human-computer interaction".
Elisa del Galdo – from Human Factors International (HFI), which includes a certification scheme for usability practitioners among its training services.
The event was attended by approximately 25 people.
Science or engineering approach
The first question was whether HCI and usability is taught as a science or engineering subject?
Ann said that although it is a practical subject you need to have a theoretical basis and sometimes have to go back to it. As with aeronautical engineering, you occasionally need to apply the theory of thermodynamics. She said that HCI/usability theory (e.g. human memory, organisational theory, design theory) strengthens the discipline and is needed to give students enough understanding of it that they can apply. They also need to know where to go to get the information. Ann also said that at UCL they now teach less statistics but how to evaluate statistical results critically. She said that there had been a move towards qualitative rather than quantitative methods.
Teaching students from different backgrounds
The next question concerned how course trainers handle people with different skill sets.
Helen commented that people from different disciplines have different approaches to design. She found it advantageous to recruit students from different backgrounds or from different organisations onto a course which encourages interesting exchanges of views.
In running commercial training, William has found a tendency for Computer Scientists to regard usability and HCI as common sense. He has been to technical IT conferences and not heard anything about users. When presenting at such conferences, usability people are therefore seen as representing a minority interest subject. However he felt that there was a difference between the Computer Science world and the Web world. At Internet conferences there is a better appreciation of the user aspects and user needs. However Helen did think that some computer scientists do want to create value for customers through good HCI and usability.
William felt that there was a need to stress that you can’t teach people about building systems without knowing about the users. The benefit of using UML (Unified Modelling Language) to explore user aspects of a system is not always appreciated.
Working at HFI, Elisa stated that if they hire people they are expected to have knowledge of HCI theory (e.g. affordance and Fitts Law) and then be able to adapt it to particular situations. She felt that there was a need to educate managers about what usability can do for them and their development work.
Ann stated that they take computer science people onto their HCI with Ergonomics MSc but these are already semi-converts to the need to consider user iisues and so may not be typical of the whole group. She had observed two groups of students attending her MSC course: younger people around 21 or 22 with a career plan and 30-40 year olds who are attending because they find the course an interesting combination. By encouraging them to mix, e.g. in group work, they can benefit from each other’s perspectives and experience.
Backgrounds and skills of people in HCI
It was recognised that students with a usability or HCI qualification will need to communicate well with their manager or computer science colleagues to be effective.
Helen stated that as with companies like IDEO, at the OU they try to recruit people who are open to other people’s backgrounds and views. It was felt that some people in technical IT disciplines are not open to others' perspectives.
Elisa recounted that originally she started as a marine biologist but has successfully moved into the HCI field. She felt that the main factor in being successful was not the discipline that you come from but the learning that you put on top. She felt that it was analytical skills that were important as well as being an excellent communicator and listener. In HFI that have a long standing methodology and process that can be taught to the people with the right basic skills.
William cited a book by Simon Baron-Cohen called ‘The Essential Difference’. This distinguished between people with systematising brains and those with empathising brains. He had developed some tests to distinguish them.
Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems. (Guardian Unlimited, http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/page/0,,937443,00.html).
William tries to teach methods such as personas to encourage empathising. This is difficult for people who are more like systematisers in outlook.)
Changing content of courses
Ann commented that she is adapting the MSc course at UCL so that students do a lot more writing, literature reviewing, reportage and presentations. In answer to a question about adapting to new technologies, she commented that the course was not tied to traditional technology such as WIMPS guidelines but encourage students to do projects and coursework with new technology such as RFID-based systems.
Role of HCI specialist working with computer scientists
Elisa saw the role of the HCI specialist as taking responsibility for specifying the user interface to a system and asking the software developer to build it. She draw a parallel between architects and builders. She valued creative HCI people who can work within a set of parameters and specify a good design. She said that money cannot be wasted on building the system twice if it fails so the design must be thoroughly tested beforehand.
Finding out what industry wants
The question was raised as to whether course organisers talked to industry to find out what they wanted. This was achieved by arranging for commercial organisations such as Serco or Amberlight to host projects. The students can be assisted by someone with a strong theoretical background in the organisation or college to tackle new industrial problems.
William commented that it was not always easy to determine what organisations wanted especially when sometimes students from companies are sent on his courses. For his user centred design course, software developers still needed convincing either of the benefits of a user-centred approach or they sometimes just saw it as common sense. The problem was getting delegates to see problems from the user’s point of view. He tended to find the Web community more advanced in this respect. This may be because if Web developers realise that if they do not do something about their unusable sites, then users can easily go elsewhere.
Elisa raised the issue of why software engineers needed to do someone else’s job i.e. learn about usability and HCI. With the correct process in place the usability person should be able to do the design job and pass the specification onto the developer. William seemed to have a different experience and noted that computer scientists do control what is built and so need to be educated in HCI. He also felt that 80-90% of organisations do not follow a process. Elisa returned to the architect/builder analogy arguing that it is the architect who should know what should be built. However client support is crucial i.e. they are the people who sign the cheques and so are the ones who should be influenced about the importance of HCI. This difference in view could be rationalised by taking the view that Elisa was talking about larger well informed organisations with usability staff while William’s experience was of smaller developments where the software engineers carry out or lead the development work themselves.
Demand for HCI/usability courses and recruitment
There was some discussion about whether demand for HCI/usability courses was rising or falling. There was a difference of opinion with one panellist seeing it as falling while another as rising. Ann felt that the undergraduate market for HCI was taking off while William saw the market as being driven by the Web industry. Helen is an outreach director for the OU and is approaching conferences to talk about HCI and recruit them to consider taking courses.
William said that the books by Alan Cooper ‘The inmates are running the asylum’ and ‘About face’ were persuasive in getting people to consider learning about HCI.
Ann mentioned that they are now modularising courses which enable students from a wider range of courses to take them. Helen is trying to incorporate an HCI module into the OU psychology degree.
William stated that people rarely understand the HCI/usability issues but know that they have a problem. This often leads them to take a course. It is important to convey that people cannot build products in isolation of users. Having no process in an organisation that incorporates users is one problem that a user-centred design course can address.
Take a course or learn on the job?
One attendee asked whether they should learn on the job rather than spend money on an HCI course.
Giles invited the panel members to persuade her of the benefits of taking a course, or as Ann put it, to explain the return on investment (ROI).
Elisa said that the return in her experience was high. She said that an MSc will make the person attractive to an employer (since many now have first degrees) and they will also learn the user-centred process to apply in their professional work. Helen said that a course would accelerate their learning of the subject.
At HFI they run a certification course and set an exam for HCI/usability certification which is for 2 half hour sessions. This is a testing process with a 30% failure rate so is a good way to identify who has a good theoretical knowledge. Helen commented HCI/usability certification can help build up a usability team within a company.
Another suggestion was for the delegate to join the Ergonomics Society. There are many jobs in the defence industry where this is a requirement.
The future
Giles asked the panel how HCI/usability training courses will develop in the future.
The panellists said that they would like to give more application experience to students. They wanted graduates to have a good balance between theory and practice and between design and evaluation.
William thought that there needed to be a more applied approach for system developers.
Ann felt that courses should also teach about institutionalising Human Factors within the design process. She also thought that social and organisational aspects will become important as well as teaching about HCI for multi-user systems. She thought that there needs to be more who recognise the importance of usability so an introductory course should be included in a range of courses for different subjects.