Background
The Workers' Compensation Board of British
Columbia (WCB) is an independent government agency that
promotes workplace health and safety. They consult with and
educate both employers and workers, while monitoring compliance
with Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. In the event of work-related injuries or diseases, the WCB helps provide
return-to-work rehabilitation, compensation, health care
benefits, and a range of other services.
The Need to Institutionalize Usability
WCB insures
179,000 employers and nearly 2 million workers (half the population
of British Columbia). They receive 15,500 pages of documentation,
23,000 phone calls, and scan 12,000 pages of claimrelated
information every day. Even a small reduction in the time
needed to complete frequent tasks would result in huge savings.
However, in order to create usable Web sites and applications
that streamline these functions, user-centered design needs to
be a routine part of development. To achieve this goal, the
Information Services Division took tremendous strides towards
institutionalizing usability, largely spearheaded by Tony Gullaci
with support from his executive champion, CIO Brian Cooper.
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"Usability is part of the maturation of the
development process. Originally, most IT
shops focused on functionality, budgets and
deadlines. Next they concentrated on quality,
architecture and integration. All of these
objectives are necessary for a "good" system.
However, even with all those pieces in place, a good systems
solution can fail if it has poor usability. Poor usability hides
great design and architecture. Designing for usability from the
very beginning of the project life cycle not only gives you better
user acceptance but improves requirements gathering and
overall quality as well."
Brian Cooper,
Chief Information Officer,
WCB |
WCB's Approach and Outcomes
The first usability
technique WCB applied was prototype testing, where users got
to evaluate wireframes during an iterative design process. By
spending a little more time getting sign-off from users before any
coding had even been done, WCB encountered far less problems
later on during development and release.
WCB quickly added to their repertoire of usability techniques,
conducting expert reviews and performance tests (e.g. task completion,
brand perception) on projects such as a new intranet rollout
and the redesign of their primary Web site worksafebc.com.
These early showcase projects produced immediate results.
This success got the attention of WCB executives, who now
request that usability methods be an integral part of the development
cycle. This has created a cultural shift that WCB is working
to inculcate in every division.
"When you first introduce usability to an organization, decisionmakers
may not always understand the value of what you're
doing," said Gullaci. "But once people see the impact, usability
creates its own momentum. It's important to highlight the return
on investment to show how usability can save 'x' amount of
dollars, keep people on our site longer, decrease the number
of support calls, and lower ongoing maintenance costs."
WCB has followed the roadmap presented by Dr. Eric Schaffer in Institutionalization of Usability: A Step-by-Step Guide, particularly
the advice about setting up a new usability operation.
To keep up with their growing demand for more knowledge and
tools, WCB purchased HFI's Usability Central product. Usability
Central is a Web-based repository of design templates, standards,
and a user-centered methodology. WCB has customized Usability
Central by adding links, references, and extra code, so that it serves
as a one-stop usability portal that will continue to evolve over time.
Next Steps
For usability to endure within an organization, it
must become a systematic part of the development process. To
this end, WCB is integrating user-centered design into Prism®,
their existing software development methodology. By enhancing
the methodology with usability activities they will achieve a powerful
synergy. WCB also plans to introduce a mentoring system
and conduct peer reviews to help propagate usability practices. "Ultimately, you have to be passionate about helping people if
you want to succeed at usability," said Gullaci. "We're not perfect
by any means, but we're delivering Web sites and applications
that really work and that people enjoy using. It leaves them with
a good feeling about us and our organization." |
