Good user design is like chicken sexing and sushi making
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Jared Spool (at UPA-DC 2007)described an experience conducting research for the Wall Street Journal for a redesign of its website that would take into account what readers of WSJ need and want. The research came up with a series of recommendations. He then saw a proposal for a complete redesign by a designer and this design conformed to all the recommendations from his year long design and this designer had not seen the study. So he asked the designer how he came up with it and the designer said I just sat around in my apartment for a weekend thinking about what someone trying to make financial decisions would want and use.
So then JS described the well known (at least I have read about this lately) discussions of chicken sexing. For whatever reason, big chicken farms need to separate out female from male chicks at 2-weeks of age and there are no externally describable differences between them at this age. Chicken sexers have a 95% accuracy rate, however. And you can get to a 95% accuracy rate by apprenticing with a good chicken sexer for 2 years. (New career anyone?) Sushi making, enemy plane spotting, and estimating third tri-mester baby weight fall into the same category of things that are hard to describe to someone else, but can be trained.
His conclusion:
Good usability can be learned, but it is not subject to introspection. Although lots is written about usability, becoming good at it requires time, effort, feedback, and observation of and apprenticeship with those that are good at it.
