Usability as Risk Management

Keep an eye out for the March edition of ACM's Interactions. I'm supposed to be in it. Pays to be humble, no?

The article deals with a mechanism I developed when I worked for a consulting company. We constantly have problems convincing our employers and clients to use usability techniques. But why force the issue? Why not let the brass decide by putting the decision in their language? That's when I started doing risk analysis of new online efforts, using usability factors. I get the business stakeholders of a new website, intranet, portal, or whatnot into a room together and spend some time quantifying how bad things could get if the initiative fails, and then out of that comes an index of risk. Using usability techniques can reduce the risk, but they're expensive. The use of techniques must be matched to a risk level, because otherwise usability won't be included in the project plan.

If you can lay your hands on a copy, let me know your opinion.