Since the last 4-8 yrs, Usability has become an important aspect of consideration when it comes to delivering web applications or portals. Its no longer the era of delivering just bug-free, fully functional and clean website with an aesthetically pleasing look and feel. With the introduction of Usability, the overall perception of how a website should look, has changed. Why did all this happen?? Around ten years ago, the Web was exciting to people. Today it's routine, its no more a rarity. It's a tool. If it's convenient, they will use it; if not, they won't. With ten times as many sites and probably a hundred times as many pages on the Web, users are getting less tolerant of difficult sites, so every design flaw means lost business. All these factors gave birth to the concept of Usability. Usability has become more important than ever. So what exactly is Usability? Usability is a quality attribute relating to how easy something is to use. More specifically, it refers to how quickly people can learn to use something, how efficient they are while using it, how memorable it is, how error-prone it is, and how much users like using it. If people can't or won't use a feature, it might as well not exist.
The Web contained fewer than 10 million sites 10 to 12 yrs back. That was certainly enough to make usability an important issue: If sites were difficult to use, people already had plenty of other places to go. More important than the numbers, however, is the change in users' attitudes toward the Web. It was exciting to be able to reach around the world and have information come to your desktop in an instantor, more often, 30 seconds. Of course, you couldn't do that much on the Web, and whenever you found what you were looking for, you were grateful. Today the situation is quite the opposite. People's expectations have expanded with the massive expansion of the Web. People just assume that the Web has what they want. They turn to search engines with all kinds of questions, and usually something comes up that has the answers. They assume that sites work. They assume that they will find whatever they are looking for and can buy almost anything online.
The Web is a tool. Consider the way that people think about that other onetime-dazzling invention, the telephone. They don't wake up in the morning and think, "Today I will experiment with my telephonic apparatus and place a call to somebody so that I can assess the sound quality of the connection." Their use of the telephone is driven by their real-world needs. The same is true for the Web, as far as average users are concerned. You, dear reader, are not the average user, as proven by the fact that you care enough about the Web to buy a book about it. (Just as the people who buy books about how telephones work are telephony engineers, and the way they think about phones is different from the way that most telephone users do.)
One of the goals of Usability was to shake up the world of Web design and make it pay attention to human needs. It succeeded, but only in part. Most Web projects today pay lip service to user experience, and it's rare to find Internet managers who don't list usability as a top goal for their sites. Unfortunately, in practice sites continue to violate many well-documented usability guidelines and as a result do not reach even a fraction of their business potential.
It's no longer enough to say that you want to design for your customers. If you give usability the priority it deserves on your site, you will be designing for them.
Jakob Neilsen can be said to be the father of Usability. Jakob's book Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (New Riders Publishing, 2000) appeared in print at the cusp of the first Internet bubble and was called a "landmark" because of its role in changing Internet professionals' attitudes toward Web design. Before DWU, most companies simply wanted cool sites. In fact, the best-selling Web design book at the time, Creating Killer Websites, advocated splash screens and other design atrocities. After DWU was published, many Internet managers realized that killer sites killed business. They discovered that the best way to do business on the Web was to create sites that their customers could use. The Web is not television. People don't go there to zone out. People go to the Web with a specific purpose in mind. They have their hands on their mouses, ready to interact and be engaged. Designing Web Usability was a manifesto. It strove to sell readers on the "practice of simplicity" over the cool design and complex user interfaces that dominated the Web at the time, and it did so partly by deconstructing many screen shots of miserable Web sites in the style of the day. In fact, when rereading DWU today, the biggest complaint most people have is that the screen shots look outdated. Fortunately, many of the design mistakes we warned against have now gone out of fashion. Unfortunately, new mistakes have arisen to take their place. This book is filled with new screen shots that show what design elements failed current users and caused much misery and lost business.
Success rates are up and user failures are not nearly as common as they used to be on the Web. The usability movement has had measurable results in terms of improved user experience.
In fact, good usability has two benefits: On the one hand, it supports your business goals on the Web and thus helps your company make more money. On the other hand, usability empowers humans and makes it easier and more pleasant to handle the technology that's infusing every aspect of modern life. We don't want to get all soft-hearted, but making life better and more enjoyable does seem to be a worthy goal. Watching people who feel oppressed by technology is not a happy sight, but it's a common one in user testing.
By improving usability, we can enable people with little education to hold meaningful jobs, we can connect senior citizens with the community, we can give users with disabilities the same information and service as everybody else, and we can allow everyone to spend their time with computers more productively and reduce their feelings of frustration and powerlessness. The happiest thought of all is that these improvements in quality of life don't come at the expense of your profits. On the contrary, usability benefits business and it benefits humanity.
Jakob's book 'Prioritizing Web Usability' is an excellent book for learning about Usability. You can also get hold of this book by Steve Krug 'Dont Make Me Think'. Both of these books were an eye-opener for me and have literally changed my perception of a web page should look. Happy reading.....
Jakob Neilsen can be said to be the father of Usability. Jakob's book Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (New Riders Publishing, 2000) appeared in print at the cusp of the first Internet bubble and was called a "landmark" because of its role in changing Internet professionals' attitudes toward Web design. Before DWU, most companies simply wanted cool sites. In fact, the best-selling Web design book at the time, Creating Killer Websites, advocated splash screens and other design atrocities. After DWU was published, many Internet managers realized that killer sites killed business. They discovered that the best way to do business on the Web was to create sites that their customers could use. The Web is not television. People don't go there to zone out. People go to the Web with a specific purpose in mind. They have their hands on their mouses, ready to interact and be engaged. Designing Web Usability was a manifesto. It strove to sell readers on the "practice of simplicity" over the cool design and complex user interfaces that dominated the Web at the time, and it did so partly by deconstructing many screen shots of miserable Web sites in the style of the day. In fact, when rereading DWU today, the biggest complaint most people have is that the screen shots look outdated. Fortunately, many of the design mistakes we warned against have now gone out of fashion. Unfortunately, new mistakes have arisen to take their place. This book is filled with new screen shots that show what design elements failed current users and caused much misery and lost business.
Success rates are up and user failures are not nearly as common as they used to be on the Web. The usability movement has had measurable results in terms of improved user experience.
In fact, good usability has two benefits: On the one hand, it supports your business goals on the Web and thus helps your company make more money. On the other hand, usability empowers humans and makes it easier and more pleasant to handle the technology that's infusing every aspect of modern life. We don't want to get all soft-hearted, but making life better and more enjoyable does seem to be a worthy goal. Watching people who feel oppressed by technology is not a happy sight, but it's a common one in user testing.
By improving usability, we can enable people with little education to hold meaningful jobs, we can connect senior citizens with the community, we can give users with disabilities the same information and service as everybody else, and we can allow everyone to spend their time with computers more productively and reduce their feelings of frustration and powerlessness. The happiest thought of all is that these improvements in quality of life don't come at the expense of your profits. On the contrary, usability benefits business and it benefits humanity.
Jakob's book 'Prioritizing Web Usability' is an excellent book for learning about Usability. You can also get hold of this book by Steve Krug 'Dont Make Me Think'. Both of these books were an eye-opener for me and have literally changed my perception of a web page should look. Happy reading.....
