Why is usability important?
Millions of websites offer users information, goods, services, and entertainment. Many of these sites are difficult to use, don't work properly, and ultimately don't attract or keep users. By following usability principles users' abilities to find information and satisfaction improve significantly.
Usability is therefore important because an object - whether a website, consumer product or other artefact - designed with the users' psychology and physiology in mind is:
- More efficient to use
- Easier to learn
- More satisfying to use
Complex computer systems are finding their way into everyday life, and at the same time the market is becoming saturated with competing brands. This has led to usability becoming more popular and widely recognised in recent years as companies see the benefits of researching and developing their products with user-oriented instead of technology-oriented methods. By understanding and researching the interaction between product and user, the usability expert can also provide insight that is unattainable by traditional company-oriented market research.
How do you do usability?
You don't, is the short answer.
OK. Pedantic. How do you "ensure" good usability?
Better! Usability is a large and complex subject. There is no simple, step-by-step procedure to follow to "do" usability.
But ensuring the usability of your system (whatever it is, be it website, software application, handtool or electronic appliance) is about observing, analysing, synthesising and applying user-centred design principles at all times.
What does usability measure?
Usability is typically measured by conducting some form of usability testing (e.g. heuristic evaluation). Such testing would typically look at several diffeent measures of usability, including:
- Ease of learning - how fast can a user who has never seen the user interface before learn it sufficiently well to accomplish basic tasks?
- Efficiency of use - once an experienced user has learned to use the system, how fast can he or she accomplish tasks?
- Memorability - if a user has used the system before, can he or she remember enough to use it effectively the next time or does the user have to start over again learning everything?
- Error frequency and severity - how often do users make errors while using the system, how serious are these errors, and how do users recover from these errors?
- Subjective satisfaction - how much does the user like using the system?
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