Tom Stewart
Tom Stewart is the founder of System Concepts. He was an original member of the Human Sciences and Advanced Technology (HUSAT) Research group at Loughborough University in 1970. In 1979, he joined the management consultancy Butler Cox and Partners and worked on assignments in Europe, North America and Australia where he was mainly concerned with making computer systems usable by and acceptable to non-computer staff at all levels.
He joined System Concepts in 1983, became Managing Director in 1986 and Executive Chairman in 2008 and has managed the growth of the company to become one of the largest independent ergonomics, usability and user experience consultancies in Europe. He is active in British, European and International ergonomics and usability standards and chairs the ISO committee responsible for the ergonomics of human-system interaction (including ISO 9241). Tom is a past President of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.
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I know I am getting (only now?) a bit cynical in my old age but I can't believe that I am the only one who finds the proliferation of discussion forums a bit tedious.
Done properly, such forums are great ways for professionals to share experience and knowledge. The Econsultancy blog and comments help keep digital folk up to date and stimulated.
But some discussions (not on Econsultancy obviously) seem to me to be little more than opportunities for pointless posts.
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by Tom Stewart
12 March 2013 16:19pm
2 comments
Some companies spend a fortune coming up with enticing names for new products - and sometimes it goes disastrously wrong.
A memorable example is the Chevy Nova, which in Spanish roughly translates to the Chevy doesn't-go.
Even if the name doesn't mean something inappropriate, our research shows that gimmicky product names might not be as clever as their creators imagine.
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by Tom Stewart
04 February 2013 10:24am
16 comments
As experts in digital marketing, I am sure you were all aware that Thursday 8 November was World Usability Day -a world wide event celebrating the importance of in usability in the digital world.
This year’s theme was financial services and few would argue that usability was anything other than vital in this market.
My colleagues at System Concepts contributed a video of interviews with potential customers and some key players in the mobile financial market in which the two mobile financial services providers interviewed were Vodafone and O2.
This set me thinking: Do we trust mobile companies to give us banking, more than we trust banks to give us mobile services?
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by Tom Stewart
22 November 2012 15:05pm
3 comments
I have just had a very bad experience with a well known budget airline (Ryanair) and I haven’t even left home yet.
It reinforced my view that I will only travel with that airline when I have no other practical choice.
So how come it is highly profitable?
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by Tom Stewart
07 September 2012 09:59am
35 comments
There are some very simple techniques that digital marketers can use to check how accessible their communications are to people with disabilities, so I was rather surprised to receive this email from Amazon:
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by Tom Stewart
16 March 2012 10:24am
6 comments
14 October 2011 is World Standards Day where the three major international standards bodies IEC, ISO and ITU celebrate the contribution that standards make to international commerce. The theme this year is ‘Creating Confidence Globally’ and it strikes me that this is particularly relevant to usability.
Most creators of digital products design their products to be usable: effective, efficient and satisfying. Although sometimes this is hard to believe, I do not think anyone deliberately ignores their users.
However, what some designers quite frequently fail to do is to apply current usability best practice or test out their products before launch. When real users find the products difficult or cumbersome to use or fail to get the desired results and stop using the product, this can come as a surprise to the unwary designer (and their bosses who see the costs of their investment rising and the benefits diminishing).
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by Tom Stewart
14 October 2011 13:16pm
0 comments
I firmly believe that observing real users doing real tasks is the 'gold standard' for usability testing, particularly when the designers observe it themselves and see the problems only real users can find.
However, sometimes full user testing falls outside the budget and the project manager will decide to use an expert usability assessment instead.
This works well for websites where an expert usability consultant can put themselves in the shoes of the user and work through typical tasks identifying critical usability issues.
But what if the system supports far more complex tasks, which users take years to learn?
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by Tom Stewart
26 September 2011 09:43am
2 comments
In my Econsultancy blog in January 2010, I said that the newly announced iPad would succeed because of its usability. At that time, the technology press was undecided about whether the iPad would succeed and I was accused of being a ‘dribbling Mac fanboy’.
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by Tom Stewart
06 June 2011 09:49am
2 comments
I was pleased my grumpy old man blog post on usability myths really sparked some interest, with most people agreeing, although a few seemed eager to point out that I’d just ‘critiqued’ them rather than ‘demolished’ them.
I guess I’ll be similarly accused of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story this time. Still, I’ll take the risk and attempt to knock some accessibility myths on the head.
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by Tom Stewart
03 December 2010 10:10am
11 comments
I guess it’s grumpy old man time but I am really beginning to get hacked off with general ignorance (with apologies to Stephen Fry) about usability.
So rather than just grumble in the corner, I have decided to demolish five of the most persistent myths about usability.
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by Tom Stewart
04 October 2010 10:00am
13 comments
