One of the things I found remarkable was how much importance this senior person attached to the matter of software usability. He spoke of how the world's leading departure control software was developed by continuously testing ideas over time with different airlines and different sets of users at the same airline. He said that the elegance and the usability of the system were perhaps a major factor in its market leadership.
I'm not an expert on usability and need to learn some more, but even I can see a few aspects of it.
1. The first layer is "basic hygiene" at the screen level - uncluttered page, good aesthetics (colors and arrangements), easy to find things, minimum need for scrolling and so on. When two of these principles conflict, you have to prioritize intelligently.
2. The second layer, of increased complexity, is workflow across pages - navigation, the number of pages required to be visited to conclude a task, how different users interact to accomplish something, and so on.
3. The third layer, at an even higher level, is context. Just as I always say that you can't make a presentation on a topic without knowing the audience, you cannot make a software without imagining one or two or four types of users. Let's take Blogger for example, on which I am typing this email. They should have (must have?) imagined a few profiles of bloggers. Normally such profiles are even given a name and an imaginary personality. Perhaps there was a profile for "Mr. John Doe, academic, 38 years old, has used computers for 20 years, typically has 20 to 30 windows open on his laptop simultaneously, likes to write the blog in the mornings with a cup of tea, pretty much lives through his BlackBerry." The more you can imagine such a typical user (note the imaginary embellishments like the cup of tea), the more ideas you can generate for usability.
Which is the most usable software that you routinely use? Which is the least usable?
4 comments:
Good Morning! Sir,
Thank you for sharing very important points.
Software usability also depend on dependability of customers. How much your customer depend on your product (software)? But if we take care of all these three points at the time of software production, the software becomes more useful and reliable.
Many times customer doesn't know what he wants actually as in software, we have to make his path clear.
Regards,
Hulesh Sahu
Dear Sir,
This was a very interesting post.The three points completely vindicate as to why firefox is one of the most used software and why free softwares volunteer software's usability problems more often compared to the charged ones.
Regards,
Aditee Sathe
Very good Morning Sir`
quiet true , about all the 3 Layers of soft. should be clear,maintainance & always be user centric
thanx for sharing knowladge sir,
i wish you give shrare you knowladge about advertising stream & industry in near futre
with regards
Prasoon
Dear Sir,
The blog was full of learnings specially the practical usage which developed a great insight as we can correlate the matter down to very basics of blogging. Thank you Sir for sharing a great learning.
Warm regards,
Anurag Khandekar,
Carnegie Hall,
Fall'09
Post a Comment