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Nicole Burton
Usability Analyst
U.S. Department of the Treasury |
This CUA by day, playwright by night, has seen methods and approaches come and go during her 20+ years in IT, but "the benefits of user-centered design persist over time"
by Jesse Berkowitz and Jean Greco
The Financial Management Service of the U.S. Department of Treasury has pioneered usability efforts among U.S. government agencies, and Nicole Burton is writing the script.
With her CUA credential (not to mention 24 years as a playwright and novelist), Nicole is currently working with a team of accountants to design an application that will automate the U.S. Standard General Ledger. The system will provide federal agency accountants with an improved Web site and an intelligent search tool, while simplifying the maintenance and quarterly release process that goes on behind the scenes.
"Our bureau of Treasury oversees the accounting of every federal government agency, so each agency needs to report using the same accounting language, which is the US Standard General Ledger," says Nicole. "That can be a challenge even within a narrow business, but when you consider how many different "industries" the government operates in – such as healthcare, education, and finance – you begin to see what a tremendous undertaking this is. Establishing and communicating common conventions requires a huge effort, especially with many agencies experiencing profound growth over the last 20 years. When you are providing annual consolidated financial reports to the U.S. Congress, as Treasury does, the information has to be reliable.
| "Knowing what works for them allows us to design interfaces accordingly. The core of all our design work is to understand our users and their business." |
"Accountants are detail oriented and methodical, yet they also need to employ considerable flexibility in their work. Knowing what works for them allows us to design interfaces accordingly," Nicole says of what makes systems usable. "The core of all our design work is to understand our users and their business."
Before joining the Treasury seven years ago, she spent over ten years as a technical writer, information architect, and usability specialist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). There she co-designed the Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator to help people estimate the adequacy of their deposit insurance.
To make the greatest impact with usability, Nicole uses a systematic process with a set series of deliverables for user-centered design (UCD). She develops profiles, personas, and scenarios to illustrate the tasks, environment, and conceptual model that a typical user operates within. This approach has proven effective, both in structuring usability studies and in creating "the coherent, believable world that works for a play. The processes are remarkably similar."
"Software development is often grindingly difficult. But when we consistently apply UCD to uncover what users do and identify what we can do for them, we have been able to develop effective interfaces every time," Nicole says.
Further tapping into her B.A. in English, Nicole has published several papers on usability*. In her experience, Nicole has seen numerous trends come and go, "but the benefits of user-centered design persist over time."
As an aside, she offers advice for would-be successors who are making secondary educational choices today: "I'd definitely consider studying usability. There's more work to be done than there are people to do it. You can practice as an independent consultant or find a home in a large corporation or government agency. Even though it is still a small profession, we're growing quickly and there are lots of opportunities."
*Published Papers
The Treasury Report on Receivables: A Case Study in Transforming a DOS-Based Mainframe System to the Internet, presented at the NIST 5th Conference on Human Factors and the Web: The Future of Web Applications, 1999.
Redesigning FACTS I: It's the Customer, Stupid! Presented at the Association of Government-wide Accountants (AGA) Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, 2002.
Performance Measures: Target End-User Success, presented at the Usability Workshop of the Federal CIO Council, Arlington, Virginia, 2003.
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