Because the light bulb has to want to change: Why usability problems go unfixed

Sometime in 2011, Steve Krug and I were chatting about a puzzling challenge in usability: the agreed but unfixed problem:

• ‘Agreed problems’ are ones that clients are fully aware of and agree need to be fixed.
• ‘Unfixed problems’ are ones that clients have not yet fixed.
• ‘Puzzling’ because some of those problems stay unfixed, sometimes forever.

We decided to do something: A survey of usability practitioners to find out whether they’d encountered the same challenge, and to find out their views on how to deal with it.

We reported on our findings at the UPA conference in Las Vegas in 2012.

Later in 2012, Francis Rowland and I ran another ‘lightbulb’ workshop at the UX Bristol conference: Francis compiled a list of #lightbulbtactics.

(Steve explained the ‘Iight bulb’ joke on slide 62.)