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Usability Benefits and FailuresUsability in the Market PlaceWhether something is usable is becoming more important as more complicated computer products are being sold to the general public. Unfortunately, it is the case that often an increase in functionality leads to a decrease in usability, because of poor design. This is leading to products being developed which are unusable: just because a system can do something does not mean that the user can make it do it. Ultimately, Eason (1984) argues that a usable system is one that is used, but 'natural selection' is not the only factor at work in the computing industry. Often products come to dominate the market because of factors such as popularity and price, and it is hard to select your desired product when a single one monopolises. It is sensible not to base your choice of products solely on how popular they are or their price. People can make informed decisions about which computer products to buy by considering their usability in terms of usability factors. Usability BenefitsOrganisations can gain tangible benefits from being aware of usability. These benefits are not restricted to companies whose business is the development of computer systems. The benefits are also available to any organisation, whose IT department bases decisions about what systems to use on their usability. In usability-aware organisations all employees can work more productively and feel more satisfied. Required Reading
Please now read Bloomer & Croft (1997) Pitching Usability to Your Organisation. This paper discusses how usability can be integrated in organisations. During the discussion, the paper covers many of the benefits that can be gained by an organisation from having an awareness of usability. Self-assessment Question 6
What are the benefits that Bloomer and Croft believe usability-aware organisations can gain?
Bloomer and Croft argue that designing for usability does not increase
development time and cost of software products. They list the benefits
that a usability-aware organisation can gain as being that usability:
Usability FailuresIt is common in the HCI community to consider system failures in order to further the understanding of usability. The two sections of Preece et al demonstrate the importance of HCI by showing the tangible benefits that can be gained in terms of productivity, and demonstrate the problems that can occur when usability is not considered sufficiently. Required Reading
Please now read Preece et al, Chapter 1, Sections 1.5 and 1.6. The examples of 'when things go wrong' most often cited by Preece et al in this reading are severe ones. Activity
Summarise the main points of Sections 1.5 and1.6.
In Section 1.5, Preece is concerned about the fact that the benefits that
an organisation gains are often unquantifiable, because many factors are
involved, making it 'difficult to attribute success directly to good HCI
design'. She explains that it is easy to provide examples of 'when things
go wrong' due to poor usability, as she does in Section 1.6, but that
examples of 'when things go right' due to good usability are more difficult
to prove. For this reason, she has gathered together numerous examples
of increased productivity and satisfaction.
Jakob Nielsen, in his bi-weekly Web column 'The Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability', presents many examples of the less severe effects of poor usability, and discusses how the following two consider the usability problems that can occur on the Web. Required Reading
Please now read: Nielsen (1998) Failure of Corporate Websites |