What is Usability and Usability Engineering – UX 101
Welcome to our new UX 101 series. A place where we discuss the various aspects of UX design and usability. In the series we will give you answers some of our most asked questions and topics. Quality resources for both newbies and seasoned usability veterans.
Usability, information architecture, user experience, accessibility, user interface design. These often thrown around buzzwords tend to sound blurry to people who are not yet familiar with the UX industry. Many different disciplines are often put into the same pot while some have made up their own definitions, which are often false.
What is usability?
It doesn't need to be confusing. Usability is the ease of use, efficiency of use, easy to remember, freedom of errors and satisfaction of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. It is a pure quality assessment done mostly by the users – it can either be bad or good.
Usability is subjective
As you can imagine, usability can be very subjective. Everyone is different and it's impossible to design a perfect system that satisfies everyone in the same way. Usability is the subjective quality measurement of the user who is subconsciously always evaluating the products and systems he or she interacts with.
You might think that the users know they are using a good system, but people only notice usability when the product they are using is bad. Subjective usability feedback turns into objective when you use various methods to constantly improve it. This is why usability testing (also called user testing) is such a valuable tool, especially when combined with eye tracking.
There will always be someone who says your product is difficult to use
You might think usability means ease of use, but this is a false assumption and we need to separate effectiveness and learnability. If we are talking about a person who uses slightly more complex software on regular basis then ease of use turns into effectiveness.
Effectiveness can include decision speed, reaction improvement and generally make a person’s average workflow faster. This can be a really useful for someone who is in a hurry.
There will always be a constant tug of war between learnability and effectiveness. You can read more about it in our article – easier to learn vs. a more effective user interface.
Usability engineering focuses on solving the problem with accurate methods
This means that we spend a lot more time on analysis, testing and sketching. The system has good usability when things work as expected when it is expected for the person who expects it. That means that innovation comes from the ideas and business plans but not from visual design or use interface components most of the times.
Our challenge lies in pairing the right methods with the specific problems we are faced with. Each challenge is a bit different and so is the proposed solution. However there are best practices that you are able to rely on.
Your benefits from usability and usability engineering
Engineering methods allow us to turn subjective demands into objective solutions, i.e. into something we can use and get best out of it creating a value. Until you have it, you`ll have to face the fact that the user is your only king.
Contrary to popular belief usability is not that expensive. This is a well proved myth – you can always take a smaller step at the beginning and decide when to stop.
Some benefits include:
- Smaller development costs
- Increased efficiency
- Reduced support costs
- Increased sales
- Increased customer satisfaction
Sounds great, right? The best part is that you can actually measure it– you can measure usability and its impact on your company.
Start with small steps and good planning
Everything starts with good preparation. If you feel that your product’s usability is not the greatest then you can start one step at time. If you need help with defining your next steps then come and visit us in our office – with one hour we will come up the best plan for your challenges.
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