Usability - What good is your application if it can't be used?

At Fastwebwork we believe that if an application isn't self explanitory it's not user friendly, and just isn't done.

Web applications are written to help people accomplish their objectives more efficiently. Each user has very specific ideas of what they want an application to do for them, and though most designers have excellent goals, they do not always mesh with end users' needs. The most over-used phrase for developers is: "It's a training issue." In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The general principal for most users is: "If something is too hard to use, I tend to avoid it." They have no desire to "train" on a new system. A User Centered Design model is necessary to building quality software. This includes usability testing, in order to determine if the software being built is user friendly. By focusing on User Centered Design, we increase adoption rates. Usability can be described by the following: the extent to which the intended user can meet his or her goals using the system being tested.

Pages and features should be either self evident or self explaining. Web pages are scanned, not read, and anything that is not intuitive will go ignored. Users typically focus on the first 'reasonable' choice and very few take time to read instructions, preferring to forge ahead and muddle through. There is just no substitute for the experience of watching your customers try their best to navigate a system that you have designed for them. The way subjects actually use your system may reveal bugs that are invisible to you. It also may suggest enhancements that were not obvious during the initial design stages.

A Usability Test should be performed during the beginning stages of development. When done properly, these tests are excellent tools to learn more about how users interact with an application. When done during the design phase, developers can save time and money by identifying usability shortcomings before releasing a new system (or in the early stages of a redesign), when changes can still be made relatively inexpensively. Be prepared, some feedback will be negative, it is not personal even if it is hard to swallow. This should be seen as positive feedback in order to improve the experience for the users.