Interview: Erika

So this actually isn't the big post I was promising yet, sorry, and neither will the next one- but hey, interview time! Erika is one of the esteemed staff at my college, and I was lucky enough to get her to agree to answer a few questions for me. Here are the questions, and her answers:

What kind of design failures do you see most often? 

Poor use of colors and fonts, to the point that something is painful to look at.
Inconsistent location of buttons, menus, shortcuts, etc. Inconsistency, especially, can cause some really insidious errors because people see what they expect to see, not what is actually there. It makes it hard for them to figure out the problem.

What kind of usability tools do you find yourself using most often? 

Funnily enough, I use Excel as one of my major tools. Lots of planning, execution, and results live in Excel for me. PowerPoint and WebEx also very big since we do a lot of remote collaboration. As to "traditional" tools: Adobe Photoshop for graphics, Axure for prototyping, Morae for usability testing, and Mindjet (mind mapping tool) as a brainstorming tool for remote collaboration (in place of stickies on a wall).

 Could you tell me about your favorite usability research?

I am a total human error geek. I really like breaking down if use failures are the result of slips (skill-based error caused by the correct intention being performed incorrectly), lapses (skill-based error caused by one or more steps in the correct execution being missed), or mistakes (knowledge-based error caused by the incorrect intention being performed). I find it interesting on a purely academic level from the perspective of the cognitive and perceptual psychology involved. I like it on a practical level because I think understanding the root cause of an error leads to a better redesign with less guessing.
I am also getting more and more into human factors in regulated industries, for obvious reasons.

 What kinds of developments would you like to see in usability (or technology) in the future?

I would like to continue to see evolution in the software tools available to make it easier to perform usability activities within increasingly agile software development. I think this will help my overall "wish" of continued acceptance of usability/user experience/human factors being accepted as a science-based element of the overall software development process, as opposed to a more art/opinion-based nice to have.