Introduction to Usability Engineering
Project, Team Roles/Skills
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Announcements
• Upcoming due dates/events: See schedule.
2
Project
• Project:
– Upcoming due dates.
• Project ideas.
– Who has one?
• Discussion
• Choosing team members by skill:
• Leadership/organization/coordination skills
User skills
Visual “eye”
Writing skills
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Project Roles/Skills
• The team:
• Risk management: responsibility is yours.
• Honoring your commitments.
• Communicating with your team members
when things aren’t going well.
• Continuous process improvement.
• What’s not working (email’d communications?
scheduling? lack of lead time?)
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Project Roles/Skills (cont.)
• The lead:
– Special responsibilities:
• Keep everything organized/coordinated.
• Lead in process improvement.
• The buck stops here!
– (But then you can delegate.)
– Leadership skills a must!
– It helps if the lead really cares
(passion/ownership feeling) about the project.
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Project Roles/Skills (cont.)
• The “User” person
– Special responsibilities: Watch out for the
user’s interests at all times!
• This means deeply understanding what the user’s
interests actually are.
• (Everyone should be doing this, but your
responsibility is to make sure this happens!)
– A talent for empathy.
– Good listener, reads subtle cues well (eg,
body language, hesitations in speech, ...)
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Project Roles/Skills (cont.)
• The “Visual” person
– Special responsibilities: Make sure the
interface “looks good”.
– A visual talent for what looks nice.
• eg: Do your written documents somehow look
nicer than other people’s?
• eg: Do you like some kinds of art?
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Project Roles/Skills (cont.)
• The “Writing/Presentations” person
– Special responsibilities: Make sure the written
assignments and presentations are done
clearly, hang together logically to make the
case, etc.
– Do you like to write/speak?
• eg: Do you get good grades in writing classes?
• eg: Do you enjoy debating?
• eg: Do you communicate well (in whatever your
native language is)?
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Project Roles/Skills (cont.)
• The above are “special responsibilities”,
not “sole responsibilities”
• Everyone does everything!
– But the special roles make sure that the
important attributes are always being watched
for.
9
Activity
• Skills inventory activity here.
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