Usability (and organizational) Problems with the 2010 US Census
The US Census Bureau is getting ready to conduct the 2010 Census, the population count that will be used to calculate congressional districts and funding. The 
trouble is, they have usability problems with the handheld computers they were planning to use, in addition to the organizational communication issues you may expect from a government agency that does the bulk of it´s work once every 10 years. Here´s the story.
Evidently, they built and are doing at least some testing of the systems, but it sounds like they fell into the classic “waterfall” development trap: build it out, then test it.
Big worries for the nation’s first high-tech census should have been obvious when tests showed some of the door-to-door headcounters couldn’t figure out their fancy new handheld computers.
Agile User Experience Design (Agile UX) would likely have prevented this problem by introducing low-detail (paper-prototype) testing earlier in the development process. By testing with paper prototypes and even more functional prototypes on computers much earlier in the development process, the problems with the interface and system logic could have been found, and new solutions created that worked better BEFORE the systems were written and constructed. As it is, the budget may QUADRUPLE for this project… not anything I´d like on my resume!
Of course the CEO of the company that built the devices offers this excuse:
“After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it’s as easy to use as a modern cell phone,” Raimondi said.
As “easy as a modern cell phone”? You´ve got to be kidding me… modern cell phones, with some notable exceptions, (iPhone and a few others) are a total confusing mess of features and functions. Most tech-savvy people take days of focused use to master some of the interactions and complexity. They can probably make a phone call, but I´d hardly call modern cell phones “easy to use” in general. You can take the massive migration to the iPhone as some small proof of that.
Besides the obvious error in logic above, the CEO also ignores the demographic and usage scenarios of the users… Census takers are likely not to be super-tech saavy computer enthusiasts, and they may not have days to train or get familiar with the systems.
I´m not belittling how tough the problem of designing this system is, but their process and understanding of how to design systems could use some modernization… I think they should try going back to pencil and paper themselves… 8-)
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