Understanding Usability

1
Understanding Usability
2
Introduction

• Utility and Usability
• The User
• User Focused Design
• Affordance

3
Utility and Usability

• Maslows Heirarchy
• It has to work first
• Be usable and understandable second
• Joy inducing coolness comes last

4
The User

• We need to understand who the user is to make
  something usable
• People have very little patience and will give up
  if you make it hard to do simple things
• Users have many characteristics
• Gender
• Age
• Experience
• Knowledge
• Patience
• May dictate appropriate graphical style and
  colour scheme
• Accessibility and Disability

5
User Focused Design

• Understanding the way a thing will be used is
  essential
• Use Cases are scenarios describing a user and a
  task
• Put yourself in the users shoes
• Jakob Neilsen (www.useit.com)

6
User Focused Design

• Layout and Organisation
• Distinguish one aspect from another
• Ease of reading
• Ease of Navigation
• The Fold

7
User Focused Design

• Colour
• Using colour to effectively convey the message of
  the site
• Not over using colour so that the user becomes
  confused
• Using a uniform set of colours in your site - a
  user does not become lost when they click a link
  and the whole layout and colour of the graphics
  changes
• Accessibility (High Contrast)

8
User Focused Design

• Typography
• Making body text readable - adjusting size and
  colour
• Making sure your site fits in with accessibility
  guidelines - contrast of text over background
  http//www.w3.org
• Appropriate fonts for logos, headings and links

9
User Focused Design

• More Dos
• Let the user know where they are by
• Placing your name and logo on every page.
• Using straightforward and simple headlines and
  section titles
• Provide search if the site has more than 100
  pages.
• Structure the page to facilitate scanning
• Use product photos, but avoid cluttered and
  bloated product pages
• Use link titles
• Do the same as everybody else
• Test the designs on real users

10
Problems from the Early Web

• Designs often derived from publications - books,
  pamphlets and CD-ROMs
• Large amounts of scrolling text
• Text overlaid on background images that was
  difficult to read
• Confusing navigation
• Poor information architecture
• Poor use of colour
• Slow download time
• Over elaborate use of Macromedia Flash
• Over stretched the available technology

11
Affordance

• Don Norman The Design of Everyday Things
• Instinct Hand shaping Grouping - Comfort
• How do we capture these things for digital media?
• Buttons should look like they can should be
  pressed and need to give feedback when you press
  them

12
Affordance
13
Conclusion

• Remember the purpose
• Do not alienate your target audience by making it
  hard
• Organize the information carefully
• Keep key navigation elements throughout the site
• Make the navigation either intuitive or
  conventional
• Work with grids to layout information and menus
• For sites with a lot of information allow users
  multiple ways to get to the information -
  searches, index etc
• A few simple principles are still the key to good
  web design