Introduction to Volume 10, Issue 3, May 2015

Our editorial for this issue, by Bill Albert, is “The Fox Guarding the Usability Lab.” In it, Bill criticizes the practice of usability testing your own design. Design agencies, who are hired to design digital products, and User Experience (UX) researchers who follow this practice put themselves in a conflict of interest that can result […] [Read More]

The Fox Guarding the Usability Lab

The idiom of “don’t let the fox guard the hen house” warns us about the potential danger of giving someone responsibility for overseeing something that he or she shouldn’t be involved with, particularly when there is an inherent interest in the outcome. Unfortunately, that idiom is all too fitting in the world of user experience […] [Read More]

Complex Systems, Cooperative Work, and Usability

Modern operating systems are increasingly complex and require a large number of individual subsystems and procedures; operators also must cooperate to make them function. In this paper the authors consider usability from a broad perspective based on this understanding, recognizing the challenges a team of operators, complex subsystems, and other technical aspects pose as they […] [Read More]