Derek Schraner has produced multimedia for a variety of clients including: Bell, CAA, Cognos, IBM, MADD, Motorola, the Ottawa Senators, and Xerox. His work — both creative and technical, from pre-production through post — can be heard in a number of successful series including BI [Business Intelligence] Radio, Integration Radio, Lessons in Business Agility, Leveraging Your Data, Know Your Service Product IQ, Navigating IBM, RadioCognos, Tech Soup, TechTalk, and Thought Leaders.
BI Radio in particular was a finalist for an ITSMA award. It averaged 10,000 new subscribers per half-hour show, in a 34 episode run, over four years. It also won him the inaugural Cognos MacGyver prize! Selected public samples archived at: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cognos/mfOm (full shows) and http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cognos/ibBC (individual segments)
Selected sample audio and transcript:
BI Radio 28-1, usability interview (opens in new window)
Derek Schraner: Hello and welcome. My name is Derek Schraner. In this segment I’ll be discussing usability with Jeff MacArthur. Along with Amber MacArthur, Jeff is the co-founder of MGI Media Communications Inc., specializing in usability, social media, video and web production. On the line from Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, Jeff, thanks for joining me.
Jeff MacArthur: Thanks very much for having me, Derek.
Derek Schraner: From a high-level perspective in fairly simple terms, can you give us an idea: What is usability?
Jeff MacArthur: I like to use a pretty broad definition of usability, and I think it’s appropriate because there’s a lot of different facets related to it. So the quickest definition is kind of ease of use. But basically it’s the study of the ease with which people can use devices or other manmade objects. It usually includes things like learnability and efficiency, memorability and general satisfaction with how it is to use. So you can apply that to everything from a website to a car to a cookbook.
Derek Schraner: Why does usability matter and to whom does it matter?
Jeff MacArthur: I think the important thing is that it matters most to users really; so to your audience or to your customers and anyone that’s in that sort of relationship where they have an audience or customers or whatnot is likely trying to or would be well advised to try to make their experience as pleasant as possible. So it ends up mattering to everyone, but the end goal is that you want to keep your users and whatever role they’re assuming, want to keep them involved in the process they’re in and able to proceed through it without frustration, basically.
Derek Schraner: Are you familiar with the origins of usability? Could you give us some brief historical overview of it?
Jeff MacArthur: Yes. So there’s a lot of different terms thrown around usability, and it’s why I like to use it as sort of a broad term. Most commonly the origin is cited as coming from human factors and ergonomics, which had its roots in psychology. And a lot of people look at in World War II weapons and electronics development and things like that are really the early examples of when that became important. And then you can follow that trajectory through the development of computers and mobile devices and in the age which we’re in now where it applies to just about everything. So a lot of people see the origin as really being in the Second World War when we started to use a lot more electronics, and obviously in that sort of theatre it’s awfully important that people understand the tools and don’t misuse them when that could lead to, you know, not frustration with the process, but death. But that’s the commonly cited origin for it, and that’s evolved over time up until now as we create new devices and things to interact with.
Derek Schraner: We’re used to changing ourselves for the sake of these devices when in fact do you think we should be changing the devices to suit us?
Jeff MacArthur: Absolutely, and I think that’s why the touch-screen has taken off really. A keyboard and a mouse, they certainly serve the purpose they were created for well enough, but it’s definitely a step removed from what our natural interaction would be, and our natural interaction is really through touch. So I remember years ago watching Minority Report when it came out and how they did their sort of virtual screens and manipulated the objects on that by swiping their hands across the air and all this stuff. And that to me and to a lot of people seems more natural because for most of our history we haven’t had keyboards and mice. We’ve had pieces of paper. We’ve had these tools that we’d move around with our hands without an intervening control like there is with the modern computer.
Derek Schraner: We’ve been looking at things, usability, from a consumer level perspective largely. Is it, and if so, how is it relevant to IT or to business?
Jeff MacArthur: It’s very relevant in a lot of different ways. So if you think about whether it’s IT or general businesses, you know, on the IT side first and foremost you build something and you want it to be used. People won’t use things that are really unpleasant to use unless they have to, and there’s usually so many options in the IT world for you. There’s a dozen different choices for any given type app that’ll all work halfway decent. So it’s an easy way to drive away customers. Bad usability is a real disincentive to use. But beyond that, we want, if you look at it in an internal way instead of looking facing out towards the customer, you want to build your tools for your company so that people are very productive on them. So that means looking at efficiency and these core usability concerns like that. It also leads to decreased training and support costs. So you can look at it facing outwards from the business side, and your goal is to have happy customers and that likely leads to a paying customer who provides some sort of value. But you have so much less control over how a customer uses something than you do somebody internally. You can sort of whip people up internally, to say sorry you have to use this. We’ll try to make it better. But if you try to do that outwardly facing on the web or with some mobile devices or whatever else, people will just walk away. So it’s really an essential consideration and one that’s only recently being I think really understood. Like it was a very realistic situation and still is in many situations for usability to only be an outward facing thing because anyone inside it’s like well, too bad. You’re stuck with using this, so learn it. It may have a terrible learning curve and things may not make sense, it may not be intuitive, but we’re paying you to do this. You can’t treat a customer like that.
Derek Schraner: Jeff, I know you’re busy, but I wanted to thank you so much for making the time to speak with me today.
Jeff MacArthur: Really happy to do it, Derek. It’s something that’s very close to my heart and that I feel strongly about. And the more people that are conscious about it, the better, not just for me as a usability practitioner, but really in its own little way it makes the world a better place.
Derek Schraner: We’ve been speaking with Jeff MacArthur of MGI Media Communications. Visit online at mgimedia.ca. I’m Derek Schraner. Thanks for listening. Take care.
(09:35)
Advertisement: IBM Cognos Virtual Performance Event is the best way to discover practical strategies, proven best practices, and actual insights to help you get more value from your BI and performance management solutions from the convenience of your own desk. Better performance, better business. Register now at ibm.com/cognos/virtualperformance.
(10:10)
Station ID: Interviews, insights and opinions on performance management. You’re listening to BI Radio.
(10:20)
Derek Schraner 