The Fundamentals of Usability

By Cathleen Zapata

What is Usability?

You may have heard of the term “usability” before, but perhaps you’re not exactly sure what it means. You may have asked yourself, isn’t usability just a fancy term for a focus group?

First of all, contrary to popular belief, usability is NOT a focus group. In fact, it’s far from it. The goals are somewhat the same – to evaluate a product through the development cycle to ultimately reduce costs and meet the user’s needs – but usability involves direct or one-on-one feedback whereas focus groups are conducted in groups of usually 5 or more participants at one time.

With usability, you are usually observing one person at a time performing tasks and then asking questions about the tasks performed either verbally or through a questionnaire. The key difference here is that you’re watching the user perform these tasks, or measuring what the user would do with your product in a real-life situation.

With focus groups, several people get together at a “round table” (just an expression, the table isn’t always round) to talk about a product or service. The focus group participants may still perform tasks, but usually the group is observing a product and then the group gives feedback on the product. Big difference – the focus group participants are telling you what they would do with the product, while the usability participants are actually doing what they’d do with the product. Clear as mud?

Usability and focus groups both have their purpose. I’m not bashing focus groups in any way! But you need to make sure the research method fits what you’re trying to achieve. For UI design, usability testing is more often than not the best approach to take.

Focus groups are great for many purposes, and if performed correctly (by an experienced moderator who can control the group and can control someone from tainting their strong opinions on the entire group) they will give you insight to user motivations and expectations. But usability testing is a great way to see for yourself what users will actually do with your product.

How do I get started?

This is a loaded question. Let’s break it down into pieces.

1. Learn, learn, learn

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert before you take the plunge into performing a test. However, take some time to read up on the subject and prepare yourself before you begin. Although it’s important to understand the fundamentals of performing a test, what questions to ask and especially how to ask them, don’t feel like you need to get an expert or be an expert in order to perform usability.

Here are some good sources to check out to get you started:

• Jakob Nielsen, the “father of usability”, is a user advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. His website, www.useit.com, has a wealth of free insights for the beginner or advanced usability practitioner.

• The Usability Professionals' Association (www.upassoc.org) has some great links to Guidelines & Methods, a Reading List and Usability Sites & Organizations.

• And one of the best books I’ve read to understand the basics of usability and how to perform a test – everything from recruiting participants to compensation to reporting is A Practical Guide to Usability

• Testing by Joseph S. Dumas and Janice C. Redish.

2. Practice, practice, practice

Run a usability study – today!
There are many cheap and easy ways to run a usability test that are so simple you could run one today. And with time, you’ll build on your learning’s and skills, and hopefully have the resources to extend your usability efforts to a higher level.

But usability doesn’t have to be posh – a down and dirty study can get you great insight into design flaws. And it’s worth your time to find every design flaw, because the better the product you produce, the happier the client will be and the more business you will obtain. And if you’re performing usability for your company, well, you’ll have the luxury of keeping your job for awhile with your outstanding results.

Remember – don’t give up. If your first stab at it doesn’t work out as planned, pick yourself up and try again. Practice makes perfect, right?

3. Refine

After you get the gist of this usability thing, there are many ways to extend your efforts and explore new approaches for feedback. You can try card sorting, paper prototyping, or various other research methods to fit your stage of development and usability needs. But most importantly for someone just learning the basics of usability is not to wait – start today and just start with the basics. “Down and dirty” feedback is better than no feedback at all.

But I think of myself as the “average consumer”, so why should I bother with this?

Assume makes an “Ass” out of “U” and “Me”. Okay, you’ve heard that before, but it’s true. Don’t assume that you know what the end users want out of your design. Even if you think you are the perfect end user of the product, you’re not every end user of the product. And even though you can’t test the product with every end user, a sampling of just 6-10 participants may get at 99% of your design flaws. But with only one user – namely yourself – you’re lucky to find even 10% on a good day.

So if you want to be the best of the best, take the extra step and run your designs through usability. The only thing you can get out of it is how to be even better at what you do. And that doesn’t hurt anybody.

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