usability intro 419

Usability

Wednesday, January 18, 12

Usability (n): The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product.


High usability means a system is:


easy to learn and remember


efficient, visually pleasing,and fun to use


quick to recover from errors


If your audience finds your document difficult to use, it

doesn’t mean that they’ve failed.


It means that you failed them.


Things should be obvious.


• Where to click

• How to search

• How to navigate individual pages


Bad design is one thing, but ...


context is another part of the problem.


We’d like to think of our readers as...


This almost never happens.


Users look feverishly foranything that is:


interesting


vaguely resembles what they’re looking for


is clickable.


Usability is mostly common sense.


We don’t read screens.


We don’t read screens.We scan screens.


We don’t makeoptimal choices.


We satisfice.


satisfying + sufficing = satisfice


Why not look for the best choice?


4


1. We’re usually in a hurry.


2. There’s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong.


3. Weighing options may not improve our chances.


4. Guessing is more fun.


Your job is to take all this into account.


Designing and writingwith end-users in mind


Revisingwith end-users in mind


Revision


We’re not fixing websites in this class.


We’re making recommendations


about effective revision.


but in the process,


you’ll write.a lot.


Professional Writing


Status ReportsHeuristic Evals

Testing MaterialsExecutive Summaries

Testing ReportsPerformance Evals


This is also a class about


work.


Working ...professionally.

in distributed environments.


usability intro 419

Technology

dont read

writingwith

usability

users

mind

wednesday

designing

fun