We have a day or holiday for everything now including usability. November 3 is World Usability Day, which is about to start as it’s Thursday in New Zealand. Its purpose is to promote the importance of making things easy to use. If my toaster oven breaks today and I buy another one, I won’t likely have too much trouble figuring it out without instructions. PalmOS devices have a low learning curve, at least, compared to Windows Mobile devices. I can’t say the same for a digital camera or a remote control as I’ve gone through many of them and each had a learning curve.
It’s appropriate that I happen to be reading Don’t Make Me Think! right now (well, not this very second as my fingers are typing, but you know what I mean). The book itself is an example of usability. It’s short — takes about two hours to read — and gets to the heart of the problems and how to fix them. I have a couple of other books on usability and I have yet to crack them.
In Why easy to use is not enough, the author writes, “How many old people have injured themselves trying to open child-proof safety containers with scissors? Can anyone get the wrapping off a CD?” I have industrial strength scissors and even using them, I cut myself trying to open items in hard plastic.
If I dread my children’s birthday parties, it’s not because of the work involved in getting the party together — but the work I have to do in opening all the toys that come with a minimum of 39 twisties and then hard plastic holders that have to be carefully cut to avoid cutting the object. People are complaining loud and clear about lost parts, so this is how the manufacturers took care of the problem… ensured it was impossible to remove parts from the box.
Instead of worrying about people returning items, Web teams have to worry about people not coming back. Sometimes we overlook the obvious or think it’s too obvious that we don’t bother doing something that would actually make the site more usable. Assumptions are dangerous when it comes to usability. Want a usable site? Then test it with real users — family and friends, if you have to.
