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Usability is an important aspect of design because you want people to use the things you build. You want them to use it for its intended purpose, and to be successful at whatever they're trying to do.
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[Dan Gorgone] Usability is an important aspect of design because you want people to use the things that you build.
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You want them to use it for its intended purpose and to be successful at whatever they're trying to do.
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and this is what's known as a "User-Centered Approach" to design.
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Meaning that instead of focusing exclusively on the wants and needs of the company or ourselves,
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we're gonna focus of the wants and needs of the users.
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Why? Because as amazing as we might think our site or app might be,
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if no one is using it to connect with us, or buy anything, or communicate, it's useless.
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Usability is incompletely measurable.
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There's no instrument or magic number that's gonna tell if a website is usable or not.
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It requires quantitative and qualitative analysis of various parts.
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Meaning, that if you wanna know for sure how usable you're site is, you need to consider measurable data.
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Like website analytics and SEO results as well as more opinion-based feedback
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such as the responses you might get from user interviews or testing.
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Usability is influenced by feelings, experience, and human nature.
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So it's important to factor any opinions along with any hard numbers that you can collect so you can get whole picture.
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But what usability often boils down to is a balance
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and when people use your site, they usually have a goal in mind.
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They want to find something, they want to read something, they want to download something, or buy something.
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All of these different somethings have different value to different people.
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As people use your site, the amount of effort it takes to find that content will factor into how usable they find the site.
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It affects their experience and their willingness to keep going if something gets in their way,
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such as confusing links, hard-to-find content, or some other unexpected detours.
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If any of these things happen, the user will have to decide if they wanna continue using the site.
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It is effort versus value.
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In the end, if the site proves to be not as usable as they'd hoped
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and takes too much effort when weighed against the value of the content they want, they will leave.
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For example, if a friend shares a funny video from a social media account, you might decide that it's worth checking it out for a quick laugh.
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This type of content does not have big value on the grand scheme of the things,
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but at the same time, the amount of effort to view it should be minimal; should be one click.
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However, if that one click leads to a site where the video takes forever to load, and then the effort and time put in this action,
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it's gonna begin to outweigh the value of what's expected at the end.
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I mean, how long would you wait for a mildly amusing short video to load?
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Users will close that site if they don't wanna wait, and then move on to something else.
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Performance affects usability,
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and in this case, the usability was poor so, the user abandoned the site.
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Well, here's another example. Let's say you need to pay a bill online and the quickest way to do so is your bank's mobile app.
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The step you go through to find the bill pay feature might be awkward,
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and there might be more steps involved than you expected.
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Now, if this was a funny little video and you had to go all through these steps to watch it,
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nobody would be likely go through with it.
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However, the value of this goal—paying your bill—is high.
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It's very important to the user.
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Therefore, they are more willing to forgive some usability issues,
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such as a form with some confusing fields or maybe some formatting issues,
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if it means accomplishing that important goal.
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However, don't think that you can get away with usability issues like these all the time.
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Because the next time the user wants to pay that bill or do something else,
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they may remember how difficult it was to use that app,
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and they may decide to go through a different methods altogether.
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What's worse is that they might tell others how bad the app is,
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and bad word of mouth or social reviews are not worth the trouble.
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Not every scenario is going to play out like these,
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but no matter what kind of content or features you offer, you want to give your users every chance to succeed.
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This means understanding what your users want, giving them what they need to accomplish their goals,
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and this will increase the chances that they'll come back and use your site again and then recommend it to others.
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Ideally, by satisfying the user's need, we should, in turn, meet our own.
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