When I’m asked what line of work I’d like to get into, I tell people I would like to design interfaces or be a usability engineer. Often times, I am met with confused looks and the question: What is usability analysis and how are you qualified to do that work?
Usability analysis is a piece of the design process, performed upon a version of a product to evaluate how effectively a customer interfaces with the product.
source: Usability Professionals Association
Some common questions in a usability analysis include:
Does the product serve its intended use (or perform additional unintended but useful functions)?
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Is the customer able to easily determine how to perform the intended functions?
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Are the interactions with the product pleasant for the consumer to the point they would want to repeat them or recommend them to a friend?
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Will the product facilitate or impede the user in their goal?
Other questions might include: In what environments is this product going to be used and does the product adhere to that environment’s contingencies? Does the product adapt to trained users or experts by providing advanced functionality?
User testing versus product testing
We can already see with these example questions how usability research differs from another related endeavor often confused with usability analysis: product testing. Whereas software or product testing focuses on bugs or errors –does the “upload photo” button upload the content successfully?– user testing focuses on the human side –will a person be able to find that upload button easily and is its function clearly articulated?– and focuses on factors such as social context, expectation, interpretation, pleasure, emotion, and other aspects of cognition in general.
Where is usability analysis used?
Virtually every software or technology company must consider usability at some point, if they are to market the product to everyday users, untrained or unfamiliar with particular technologies. I can recall a girl I used to date who had problems using her PC because she refused to explore menus (she even went so far as to refuse to right-click anything due to fear she might do something damaging and irreversible) To some extent, products should accommodate all levels of user knowledge and technical prowess by being intuitive and inviting, though maybe this girl was beyond the help of usability.
Usability analysis is also pivotal in making decisions when comparing two design specifications. With physical products, this can include the shape and placement of handles or switches. In software, I might ask myself whether my links attract more clicks if they were in bright pink, rather than orange? (probably not) or what if they were in a slightly larger font? Many features of a design can be targets of usability analysis: layouts (both physical and on the web), colors and styles, tactile features, how directions are phrased, and customization features. An interesting conversation came up last night whereby a friend complained about the length of a battery’s life in a smartphone which impeded its usability. Depending on who you ask, areas where the user cannot intervene (such as batteries) might be considered a usability concern.
Thanks!
That’s my take on usability. I hope this was informative to those who have posed the question raised at the beginning of the post: what is usability? I’ll save the answer to the second question I posed for another day
Other resources for finding out more about usability:
Usability resources from UPA
Useit.com, usability resources from an industry leader, Jakob Nielsen
top usability books, courtesy of Smashing Magazine
I invite you to comment by critiquing this post: Perform your first usability analysis!!! how “usable” was this blog post? Did the formatting attract you to the right information? Were the pictures informative or distracting? Was the language put in understandable terms? Did you get all that you expected?
And who thinks that battery life should be an issue of concern for usability professionals?