Usability,why you should care!
By Andreas Maratheftis on Friday, 9 of November , 2007 at 6:07 pm
Lately,especially with the explosion on the web there has been a lot of talk on Usability and why it is important. A lot of people at the time said,who cares, if we can use it anyone can. Developers usually test system’s this way (Joel is right,you do need testers-not only for bugs), by testing the system themselves and find it to an understanble level they usually release the software to the client. This is where usually trouble begins, the system is not used by the client and eventually you have another failed project in your hands.
Usually when client’s come and say to me, the software that “Leaping Bass company” did for us, doesnt work as it should, we can’t use it, it’s not easy to learn, and it is affecting our productivity. The approach to that is to first find out why this has happend -by ofcourse using the software yourself, but also to try and understand the users from a business perspective.
Ask the Questions
Often i ask and try to find out a number of details using the following questions:
1. Why the system is not used efficiently and not by all users? What are the reasons behind this?
2. Is the system compatible with the Usability requirements and criteria set(if any)?
3. Is the system designed to standards? If not, how can that be achieved?
4.The user’s opinion and the manager’s opinion, and how these affect the systems acceptance?
5. Changes that would be needed, both in the system itself, the company employees and the company.
Set the Criteria
There is a range of criteria (depending on the project), you can check the system against. The first step should be to first define them.The most important ones are:
1. Understandability: The system should be easy to understand, Interface elements should be clear and labeled appropriately. (http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/requirements.htm)
2. Learnability: The system should be easy to use, and most importantly easy to learn. Users should not be forced think or guess what the system is trying to do or what they are supposed to do next. Novice users may need initial training (e.g training is aimed at a 2 hour system walkthrough. New features training will also be provided) but expert users should need no training at all.
3. Effectiveness: The system should provide efficient ways and means for users to achieve their tasks.
4.Efficiency and Speed of performance: The system should help the user to complete certain tasks in at most 3 steps. Each step should not take more than 10 seconds.
5.Consistency: An overall consistency of pages, tools and processes must be followed. This will ease the learnability of the system and increase the knowledge retention of the users.
6.Feedback: The system should provide user feedback at all times. This should be evident across the system, and should happen as a response for each user’s action or system’s error.
7. Error Prevention: The system must help to prevent the user from making errors. This increases the productivity and efficiency of the system and decreases the user’s errors.
8. Error Recovery: The system should give the ability to the user to recover from errors quickly and easily, e.g. when a user makes an error in a form he should be able to return at any point in the processes and correct error based on the guidelines given by the system’s error message.
9. Visual Clarity and Interface Attractiveness: The content of the intranet should be at all times easy to read and comprehend. The colours used in the system and the overall intranet structure should be appealing to al users
10. Compatibility: The system should be compatible with all the companies systems and should be accessible remotely. Furthermore the system should be compatible with the two languages spoken in the company e.g English and Greek.
Having done that you set yourself a basis and goals that the system must meet in order to solve the problems defined above. Moreover a set of requirements need to be set that will validate the criteria set above. This can me in the form of:
1.The system has to be designed to standards. Specifically the system should be consisted with web standards such as the WW3 guidelines. (http://www.w3.org/)
2. The system should be compatible to accessibility guidelines ( http://www.w3.org/WAI/ )
3. The system should cater for users with disabilities and should enable future modules (depending on the users disabilities) to be ‘build on top’ of the existing modules.
4. The system should be compatible in a range of browsers and devices (handheld pc).
This way, you can gather a number of information which will allow you to determine both the technical and non-technical issues that affect the system thus enabling you to propose and implement the correct solution.
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Category: E-business, General Web, Usability
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