The purpose of CUE-7 was to compare recommendations for given usability problems.
Nine professional teams simultaneously and independently suggested recommendations for fixing six nontrivial usability problems. Three problems originated from CUE-5 (IKEA PAX Wardrobe Planner). The remaining three problems originated from CUE-6 (www.Enterprise.com).
The CUE-7 results were presented and discussed at a panel session entitled “Recommendations on Recommendations” at the CHI 2007 conference in San Jose, CA, USA, in May 2007.
Practitioner’s Take Away
- Be aware of business and technical constraints.
If business values are irrelevant to usability assessments, it isn’t hard to also conclude that usability is irrelevant to business. - Spell out your recommendation in detail to avoid misunderstanding and “creative misinterpretation.”
- Recommend the least possible change. Tweaking the existing thing is always preferable to starting over. Major changes require major effort, including retesting a lot of “stuff.”
Papers about CUE-7
Recommendations on Recommendations,
by Rolf Molich, Kasper Hornbæk, Steven Krug, Josephine Scott and Jeff Johnson
User Experience Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 4, 2008.