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07/27/2001 Archived Entry: "27-July-2001 -- Gone in a Flash: Why E-Com firms are in flat line mode"

Usability and online financial services: big losses -- "It is important to note that many web development groups employ a popular methodology known as "Use Case" modeling. This is not the same as "cognitive task analysis." In fact, implementing a "Use Case" approach is one of the fastest ways to insure that a product will have a poor customer experience design, be dramatically over budget, and late."

Replies: 2 comments

Remember the bias here - TaskZ is a site operated by a usability consultancy. The article just comes off to me as a big ad for MauroNewMedia. Wild statements like
"implementing a "Use Case" approach is one of the fastest ways to insure that a product will have a poor customer experience design, be dramatically over budget, and late." seem unprofessional, given that the article gives no references to support this position (personally - Use Cases are incredibly useful if informed by a user experience perspective)

Bottom line - we need to be cautious reading things written by our own community but masquerading as unbiased journalism. There's some good points, but take them with a grain of salt...

Posted by Jess @ 07/27/2001 10:35 AM EST

I'd echo Jess's comments on the usefulness of Use Case analysis. They are a tool for documenting WHAT the user wants to do, not HOW they should achieve these aims. As such, they are very useful, but you need to bring other techniques to the party if you're going to produce a user-friendly design.

I would also echo the truth of what the article says about the quality of on-line banking services. My wife registered for the on-line offering of one of the UK's top banks. We've used it twice in 6 months. It's almost totally unusable in design, the interface is written in Flash and it takes forever to load. It's quicker to drive down the road to the nearest branch.

Posted by Alan Fisher @ 07/30/2001 09:56 AM EST

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