Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.
- Learnability - How easy is the first-time experience.
- Efficiency - How few keystrokes (or clicks / or whatever metric makes sense) are required to get the job done for repeat users.
- Memorability - How easy is to get started after you come back to the product after a while.
- Accessibility - Not just for people with disabilities. Think of how easy it is to use when outside under sunlight, or if user breaks their hand.
- Errors - How easy is to recover from error states (such as entering wrong credit card number). Instrument user actions - Do people repeatedly click on certain items on your app / website expecting something to happen, but nothing actually happens? Use metrics to identify such areas of your product and make suitable changes.
- Satisfaction - How pleasant is to use your design. It is difficult to measure. You don't want to interrupt user's workflow by showing a "Are you satisfied" popup. Usability studies can help here, but users may not be completely honest with you, or they feel it's their fault, and not the app's problem.
Focus on the user and everything will Follow
Involve user at every step of the phase.
Expectations:
Reality:
Design the right thing
Design the thing right
- Involve design, engineering and product management.
- Talk to users See talk for more details. There are some things you'll only understand when you talk to users in the field.
- Identify all the scenarios in which users use your product.
- Create an "experience map". See what users do before, during and after using your product, identify gaps in the market and customer pain points.
- Now you understand the problem, but you don't know how to solve it yet.
- Be creative, generate a lot of ideas
- Do rapid prototyping and do quick usability studies
- Have a high bar for quality
- Make the experience consistent
- Focus on accessibility
- Get the "Critical User Journey" right. A user's journey while getting the task done may not involve just one feature, but a bunch of features, maybe even across products and devices.
- Goals for this phase include Pride in crafstmanship, attention to detail and measurement.
- [Data Informed Design] - Combine both quantitative and qualitative data to make decisions.
- Use the HEART framework - Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success.
