Usability or “user-friendly” are interchangeably used when first introduced to a gadget, application or website. It’s the core ingredient in a good website or application design, next to aesthetics, however you want to rank both. Although our preference with software and design is subjective, the common denominator boils down to usability. Or in other words, how easy it is to use a system.
I have found myself on the brink of throwing my mobile phone because of an application that didn’t even start to download no matter how many times I’ve murdered the “download” button or cursed my laptop for a complex website that just didn’t seem to speak my language. It can be so frustrating to depend on technology for your convenience but get nothing in return. This is where usability comes into play.
What is Usability?
The most successful software engineers didn’t achieve greatness overnight. They had to spend grueling hours thinking of how a machine with a binary language of one and zero is able to communicate with humans with an alphabet from A to Z. Usability aims to give users a satisfying and great experience with an application or a website. A user should end up clicking that “exit” button with reached goals from visiting the system in the first place. They should get familiarity right at the beginning of initial usage, reach objective while exploring the system, and be able to reuse it with twice the familiarity.
- Accessibility
If users want to use your system but can’t make it work in the first place, then your system is rubbish and making it public, along with other brilliant and functional systems out there, is beyond me! An excellent system is free from broken links and server errors.
- Simplicity
A good system should be learnable by the human capacity. Both tech-savvies and tech neophytes alike. Users shouldn’t need a manual for using a good system. It is expected that all necessary features and elements should be visible and data should be clear and apparent. The system should provide all the frequently used options accessibly.
- Relevance
A great usability design caters to all the user’s needs. First off, the interface should be structured in a meaningful, clear, and useful way. It should segregate related and unrelated aspects, and provide users what they’re looking for in the first place. With the evolution of technology, a lot of untrustworthy sites are effortlessly penetrating end-user systems and users are sometimes wary of getting scammed. They gauge website credibility by the amount of relevant information they see about the products or about the website itself.
- Feedback
Every action should create an equal and compatible reaction. Every time users click on a particular button, they have a pre-understanding of what the system must give and a good usability should be able to provide this to the user. The outcome should be accurate and clear, otherwise, you’re pulling down your system’s usability. On top of that, the users must be entitled to timely feedback, errors and exceptions that are significant to the user’s interest and objective.
- Tolerance
There’s no such thing as a perfect system, there’s also no such thing as a perfect user. You want to be tolerant and flexible to cut back on errors and misuse from the user by allowing to undo and redo processes. The last thing users want is to encounter erroneous systems with annoying error pop-up messages that continuously deviate them from their main goal because if they do, they can quit and never visit your system again. Provide users with a few options to avoid error-prone conditions.
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