Usability

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What is Usability?

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    What usability is, and basically it's the  extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with three things: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, in a specified context of use. Okay, that's the official definition of usability. It's been around for a really long time. But the *effectiveness* – okay – is it effective? So, if a person comes to a  website, an app, you know, anything – can they do what they're supposed to do?

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    *Efficiency* – can they do it quickly? Do they get stuck? Do they get sidetracked? Do they go in some totally different direction? And *satisfaction* – do they feel good? Okay, that's the more emotive kind of aspect. Do they feel good about their experience? We want to make sure that what we're  creating makes sense to our users and meets their needs. Are we meeting their needs?

Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. Designers usually measure a design’s usability throughout the development process—from wireframes to the final deliverable—to ensure maximum usability.

“Usability is about human behavior. It recognizes that humans are lazy, get emotional, are not interested in putting a lot of effort into, say, getting a credit card and generally prefer things that are easy to do vs. those that are hard to do.”

— David McQuillen, ex-Swiss banker and founder of Sufferfest cycling workout resources

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    We are emotional creatures. We're not pure brain. Well, pure logic. But emotion drives so much of our lives. This is very clear in the technology world. You sometimes have images of like silicon wafers that really show the raw technology. Or one of those images of the blue light shining

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    from the super games computer with multiple video cards. But if you think about... one is the game that's going to be played on that computer with the video cards. Or from a technology  point of view, think about social networks and the way you feel as you engage in those. Emotion is a crucial part of the way we engage with technology. It's part of being human and because we're human, it's part of our lives with the technology.

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    Irrespective of whether that is deliberate, it is always going to be there. This has been true since the very beginning of the use of technology. All technology, but particularly computing technology. Within Human-Computer Interaction, you can see the roots of this in the late eighties. And these three key words came out at this point. *Effectiveness*, which is, does something do the job you want it to do?

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    Does it satisfy the need? *Efficiency* – does it do it well? So is the user able to execute whatever they need to do using as few actions as possible, as easily as possible, as easy to remember is possible? But then there is a third word, *satisfaction*. Do they actually enjoy doing what they're doing? So these have been around since the late eighties. They found their way into ISO standards, that first emerged in the early nineties and are the existing standards today,

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    although they've been updated over the years. So very, very early on it was recognized that satisfaction was crucial. However, if you look back for probably the first 20 years of usability, it was often ignored, to the extent that often when people quoted these from the ISO standards, they quoted effectiveness and efficiency but forgot satisfaction.

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    Now, even if you're taking a very hard-edged business view of computer use, you're going to install something that's going to run in a large office or something like that. For pure business value, if your employees are happy, then they're likely to be productive. If your customers are happy,  then they're likely to buy your product. Getting the right emotions is critical for business value

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    as well as for human value and for actually appreciating our users as whole human beings.

Table of contents

Usability Elements For Exceptional Experiences

People often confuse usability with user experience and ease of use. Usability is a component of user experience (UX) design. According to the Nielsen Norman Group—a leader in the UX field—usability is the second level in user experience. It comes after utility and before desirability and brand experience. So, after you’ve determined that your item can solve users’ problems, you must address its usability. A design’s usability depends on how well its features accommodate users’ needs and contexts. Therefore, you are responsible for your design’s usability. It should contain these elements:

  1. Effectiveness—It supports users in completing actions accurately.

  2. Efficiency—Users can perform tasks quickly through the easiest process.

  3. Engagement—Users find it pleasant to use and appropriate for its industry/topic.

  4. Error Tolerance—It supports a range of user actions and only shows an error in genuine erroneous situations. You achieve this by finding out the number, type and severity of common errors users make, as well as how easily users can recover from those errors.

  5. Ease of Learning—New users can accomplish goals easily and even more easily on future visits.

When they first encounter an interface, users should be able to find their way about easily enough to achieve objectives without relying on outside/expert knowledge. A design with high usability guides users through the easiest and least labor-intensive route. So, you must leverage a deep understanding of users’ contexts. To do that, you must accommodate their limitations, such as their environment, likely distractions and cognitive load.

How to Design for Optimum Usability

You should first focus on how well your design will flow in context. That means you focus on it as a whole—not on its parts (e.g., individual webpages)—and make content simple. Therefore, ensure you:

  1. Work with a clear understanding of users’ goals and show it in your design.

  2. Mimic the real world regarding concepts, icons and language.

  3. Present instantly understandable, jargon-free messages and actions users can takeone chief action per screen.

  4. Limit options to give a strong information scent on an uncluttered display—show essential information for completing tasks.

  5. Keep content consistent.

  6. Follow established norms regarding function and layout (e.g., logo positioning, tappable buttons).

  7. Use proper font size, color, contrast, whitespace, etc. to:

    1. combine aesthetic appeal with scanning readability,

    2. present a clear, logical information hierarchy,

    3. design for accessibility.

  8. Use chunking and emphasize key information at the beginning and end of interactive sequences.

  9. Offer informative feedback about system status.

  10. Include helpful navigation systems and search functionality.

  11. Allow for customizable controls, including shortcuts.

  12. Avoid disruptions – e.g., forced logins/pop-ups.

  13. Make forms easy to complete.

  14. Include warnings and autocorrect features to minimize errors.

  15. Make errors easy to diagnose.

  16. Offer easy-to-understand help documentation.

  17. Show clear contact options.

  18. Provide a back button to undo actions.

  19. Include ALT tags to show more information about images.

  20. Consider server abilities regarding page-loading time and downtime.

  21. Beware of in-app browsers and restrictions (e.g.,scrolling) in mobile design.

  22. Make links active.

  23. Describe links accurately.

  24. Use user personas.

  25. Do thorough usability testing

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    Buttons are very important in terms of UI elements. First of all, there is a lot of problems with  buttons, and, second of all, buttons are what gets people paid because ultimately if there is an online business or something, there is a button somewhere that says, 'Give me your money' or 'Pay' or 'Check out', and that kind of keeps the whole internet going. So, buttons are really, really important.

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    So, a couple of things about the button: it has an internal margin called 'padding'. It has an external margin just called 'margin'. It can have a color, a weight and a font for the label on it, a different color, corner style, a color or gradient fill. And, no, we don't fill buttons with photos. And it can have a shadow. Most buttons out there, or maybe at least 50% of them, have the same problem. And, hopefully, you can see it here. I'm just going to give you a second.

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    I'm going to drink some water; and if you see it, then you're already on the good path. Okay, this button has a label that's not vertically in the center of the button. And this is a really big problem because it makes our brain process it like a fraction of a millisecond longer. And if you have a lot of elements like that in your layout, it's just going make it more difficult in the long run. So, if you use a simple rule of just adding guides and going through the middle of every side of the button, of the button shape,

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    and then positioning the text exactly in the center, that's going to put you ahead already because this is something most people do wrong. This is something that is so common and it's so easy to fix that it's just mind-blowing. And just this one thing is going to take your designs to the next level. Of course, once you notice things like that, you can look at everything that way. So, if there is a title on a card and it's a little bit off-center, just place it in the center.

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    If it's a different margin than something else, just fix the margin. Another common problem is not enough space on the button or just bad alignment overall. So, this is also a very common one while we try to fit a longer text on a smaller button. And this is really bad as well because those vertical lines, the left edge of the button and the left edge of the text are actually kind of merging together in our head, and then the right edge does the same thing. So, it creates a lot of those vertical lines

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    to process for us and that makes it harder and longer to process. So, it's just harder to read that way, and there is a very easy solution to this. If the distance from the bottom is X, let's say, then just use 2X on the sides. But there is an even easier way; if you use the W of the same font – and that's because that's one of the widest letters – if you use the W of the same font next to it on the top, bottom and left and right and then a double W on the sides,

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    you should be completely fine, but at least  a single W on every side would make a button just simply faster to process and just easier to read. So, single is good, double is even better. And you can see it here as well in a typical  example. This button on the left is just harder to read and then just this one little change makes it instantly a lot better. So, once we're talking buttons, there's one other thing that most junior designers do

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    quite a lot, and it should be really clear that what buttons are saying is important. So, don't have them say 'Next' or 'Continue', but instead always state clearly what will happen *after* they click the button. So, a label called Next is just not helpful because they don't know what's next. They don't know what's going to happen. And another thing, rectangular shapes or underlined links are much faster to process as a button,

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    of course, and if they have a shadow, they're even a little bit faster still. So, a blobby weird shape if you want to have this as a button is always going to be processed slower and in some cases people might not even click on it at all. So, just keep your buttons rectangular – it's just the best way.

Users should feel immersed and in control of products/designs that predict their actions and help them get things done properly and fast. If they stop to think about what you’re showing them, they’ll start losing trust. Overall, they should find it all satisfying—if not pleasing.

Our course-selection page anticipates users’ needs by clearly guiding towards goals via filters.

Learn More about Usability

The Interaction Design Foundation has a wealth of material on usability, including this course: The Practical Guide to Usability

See important points about desktop vs. mobile usability

Read Smashing Magazine’s extensive list of usability considerations

Here’s an exemplary, insightful walkthrough of an app’s usability

What is an example of usability?

Usability focuses on how intuitive and user-friendly a design is. Taking an e-commerce site as an example:

- Is it effective? Can users find what they are looking for and place an order? Does it meet their expectations?

- Is it efficient? Is it relatively quick and easy to carry out tasks? Do users end up backtracking on the site or wasting time in numerous layers of navigation?

- Is the experience satisfying? Are users happy or frustrated? Are they confident that their order has been successful?

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    There are two main reasons. The first that it's a legal requirement in almost all countries that you make websites that anyone can use, even if they have reduced abilities. This isn't the best reason, but for organizations with legal compliance is a priority. It can be a very powerful one. The second issue is that we find that accessibility is closely connected with general usability and search engine optimization (SEO). When we do things to improve accessibility,

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    we end up improving both of these other topics. It turns out that search engine optimization and accessibility have more in common than you might think. They both need to deal with technology that's trying to understand the pages. In the case of accessibility, assistive technology needs to present it to users with reduced abilities who perhaps cannot see it or hear it. So assistive technologies will attempt to present web pages in an appropriate form for those users. For search engines,

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    the Web crawlers need to understand the contents of the pages so they can be indexed correctly. So the structure of the content needs to make sense in both cases, cascading style sheets can work wonders in making a messy HTML page look brilliant. But style sheets are complex to interpret. Assistive technology and search crawlers may simply ignore them. That means if you're relying on style sheets to present your content in a meaningful order, those adjustments go away. Here are some general guidelines for implementing accessibility in web design.

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    One of the keys to accessibility is to design for assistive technologies or to at least be aware of assistive technologies. When you're designing, if you're looking at visual impairment then the screen readers are the main assistive technology there. Screen readers take the contents of the screen and read it out to you. They are now built into most platforms by default, including smartphones. But if you want to ensure your website works well, the screen is you should try it out. An accessibility specialist may be helpful in that respect.

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    Screen readers deal with written content, but an important issue is that we need to provide non text content in alternative media. This is the dreaded ALTtext that you are frequently prompted for when creating images. This is because screen readers are great for reading out text in HTML, but if it happens to be text embedded in an image, it has little hope. And for meaning pictorial images Despite the rise of AI, users are likely to get a description

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    of what an image shows rather than what it was intended to mean. And just as a quick side note, ALT text with decorative images should always be empty and empty ALT-tag tells assistive technology that is not important and can be ignored. If you've got video clips or audio recordings on your site, you need to provide text alternatives for that. Closed captions and transcripts are best and are now provided automatically by many tools. Of course, one of the real usability advantages of text

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    alternatives is that you can search them. So if you were looking on your internet or on a website for something that somebody said, then you could find that in the transcript and have the entire text available to you there. But most changes for accessibility do benefit all users, especially when you start to think about how can we simplify this layout? How can we make the whole thing easier to use?

What are the 3 factors of usability?

Usability encompasses three core factors: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Effectiveness refers to a user's ability to complete a task using the product. Efficiency focuses on the speed and resources used to achieve the task. Lastly, satisfaction measures how pleasant and satisfactory the user experience is when interacting with the product. Ensuring these factors are optimized contributes to a user-friendly design and a positive user experience.

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    One of the early standards that  mentioned usability was ISO 9241. And it talked about three crucial  issues for user interfaces. One of them was *effectiveness* – does it do the right thing? Does it get things done that are important? The second was *efficiency* – does it do that with the minimum effort? The minimum mental effort?

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    The minimum physical effort?  Or is it taking extraneous effort that's unnecessary? And very often, people only quote those two because there was a third one as well, which is *satisfaction*: Does it make you feel good? Do you feel happy having used this system or used this piece of software? And so, that last one is often missed entirely. And that's all about the *emotion*, the way you feel.

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    And it was often ignored, often missed in the  past. What's now happened is that's become perhaps in some ways more important than the other two. Emotion is important because it's good to feel emotion. But also, *emotion affects the bottom line in business*. If your employees are happy, they tend  to be more productive. So, if you're designing a production line or  an office or wherever the environment,  

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    if you can have software and systems that  make people feel good, they'll tend to work better. And certainly you want your customers to feel happy because they're the people who  are usually going to buy your goods. So, if you've not made your  customers happy, they don't buy anything. So, emotion is important to us as humans, but  it's also important from a business point of view.

What is desirability vs usability?

Desirability and usability are distinct aspects of user experience. Usability focuses on how easy and intuitive a product is, ensuring users can complete tasks efficiently. On the other hand, desirability relates to the emotional response a product evokes, encompassing its aesthetics, appeal, and the pleasure users derive from using it. While usability prioritizes functionality and user-friendliness, desirability emphasizes creating a memorable and enjoyable user experience. Explore Interaction Design Foundation's article on "Usability vs. Desirability."

Is usability the same as usefulness?

No, usability and usefulness are distinct concepts in design. Usability refers to how easily and effectively users can interact with a product, and how satisfied they are with that interaction. On the other hand, usefulness addresses whether the product fulfills a specific need or solves a meaningful set of problems for users. A product can be usable (easy to use) but not useful (doesn't meet user needs). For a deeper dive into their differences and importance, consult the Interaction Design Foundation's article, "Useful, Usable, and Used: Why They Matter to Designers."

Is usability the same as accessibility?

No, usability and accessibility are related but distinct concepts. As Don Norman points out, accessibility is about making things easier for everyone, especially those with reduced abilities. Think of accessibility as usability's close cousin. Usability aims to ensure that a product is straightforward and efficient for everyone, whereas accessibility ensures that even those with disabilities can use the product. While optimizing for accessibility often improves usability, enhancing usability doesn't necessarily make something accessible. For example, an optimized website for accessibility might include features like video transcriptions, image captioning, Alt attributes, and semantic HTML. Both usability and accessibility aim for a more user-friendly experience, but accessibility places special emphasis on inclusivity for all user types.

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    Don Norman has a great quote about that accessability is about making it easier for everyone. I like to say that accessibility is the cousin of usability: they're

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    sisters, and it's because you're optimizing your code, simplifying your layouts, you know – maybe a little strategically for screen readers; knowing that things like maps are going to get in the way or that a layout is going to impact the way that a screen reader accesses it, and it's the same for – if you've done any SEO or played around with the way Googlebot thinks and parses a page, it's very structured; it's very strategic, and once you realize how it does that, you can think that way when you're designing as well – so,

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    plain English; consideration for the end user; browser and device compatibility; you know, this is where usability and accessibility are combined with that goal of useful, usable, searchable, you know, and the key is quick and efficiently and painless – really, that's critical: like I said, for accessibility, even more than usability. So, accessibility impacts SEO, and the reason is because the better the experience and time on site is the main

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    factor for – the Nielsen Net ratings, maybe ten years ago, set the standard from, you know, number of unique visits to time on site, which is why Facebook and other sites try to keep you locked in to view their content, because their advertisers incentivize them with time on site. Well, the more you do that, the more Google's algorithm likes your site. Making graphical information

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    searchable – all graphical information: Google likes that, so that's a ranking indicator. Screen reader testing can also help you figure out what's missing from your SEO keywords. So, if you look at your Alt text, you can be, like, "Oh, wait a minute; we haven't optimized this." Now, the thing I should say is that if you optimize your usability, it doesn't necessarily impact accessability, and if you optimize SEO, it doesn't

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    necessarily impact accessibility. So, it's really the other way around: modify, optimize accessibility can improve SEO, can improve usability, right. It's not mutually exclusive. It's not mutually bi-directional – so, look to optimize areas of SEO and accessibility overlap. What are those? So, video transcription, for example, image captioning, Alt attributes, title tags, headers (H1, H2), link anchor

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    text, on-site sitemaps, table of contents or breadcrumbs, content ordering, size and color contrast of text, semantic HTML. So, this is an example from SEO Moz that, you know – it's like if you went to this page and you're trying to, you know, submit your taxes for tax season, which of these would – which of these – if you didn't see the page, calculate your tax return or online

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    tax return, tax return estimate, tax return refund / rebate, you know; it's that the screen reader's literally reading all that out, so you're starting to think about, hopefully, the experience – the optimization opportunity as audible, you know, something you hear. So, what does it sound like? What does it sound like? Does it have meaningful descriptive text that's just not going to be a bunch of garbage? A lot of people when they're listening to screen readers,

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    they get overwhelmed – it's totally overwhelming. It's because it's like "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah": most blind users listen to their voices in a much, much faster pace like that. So, it's like, you know: two, three times as fast – like, it's going like this, and it's like all this information. But the reason why it's overwhelming for, you know, someone who's not familiar with it is because – it's all the garbage that's in

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    there, all the tags and all that – all this just raw web architecture is revealed through voice, and it's totally nonsensical, and the reality is that screen-reader users have to listen to all that, so they have to listen to, you know, 60 to 80% junk to find the one or two things that're meaningful and valuable to them. Right, so you can help by the way that you order your titles, the way that

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    you, you know, define your headers, define your title tags, your your Alt tags, your image captions, and so forth and so on.

Is usability the same as user experience?

No, usability is a facet of user experience (UX), but they aren't synonymous. Usability focuses on the ease of use and effectiveness of a product. It evaluates how user-friendly and efficient a product is for its users. In contrast, user experience encompasses a broader range of factors, including the emotions, perceptions, preferences, and responses of users when interacting with a product. While usability is crucial, UX considers the entire journey and holistic experience. For a comprehensive understanding, refer to the Interaction Design Foundation's article, "Usability: A Part of the User Experience."

How do you analyze usability?

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    If you just focus on the evaluation activity typically with usability testing, you're actually doing *nothing* to improve the usability of your process. You are still creating bad designs. And just filtering them out is going to be fantastically wasteful in terms of the amount of effort. So, you know, if you think about it as a production line, we have that manufacturing analogy and talk about screws. If you decide that your products aren't really good enough

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    for whatever reason – they're not consistent or they break easily or any number of potential problems – and all you do to *improve* the quality of your product is to up the quality checking at the end of the assembly line, then guess what? You just end up with a lot of waste because you're still producing a large number of faulty screws. And if you do nothing to improve the actual process in the manufacturing of the screws, then just tightening the evaluation process

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    – raising the hurdle, effectively – is really not the way to go. Usability evaluations are a *very* important tool. Usability testing, in particular, is a very important tool in our toolbox. But really it cannot be the only one.

To analyze usability, evaluating how effectively users can interact with a product is crucial. Simply conducting evaluations without implementing improvements can lead to inefficiencies. Think of it like manufacturing: if a product has flaws, merely ramping up quality checks doesn't address the root issues. While usability testing is invaluable, there are other answers. The goal is to pinpoint and correct design shortcomings, optimizing the overall user experience. Check out our usability testing course for a deeper dive into this subject.

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    When you create something, you design something,  you need to know if it works for your users. And you need to get that design in front of them. And the only way that you can make sure that it meets their expectations is to have them actually *play with it*. Usability testing is *the number one* technique for determining how usable your product is. We want to see how *successful* our users are, see if they're on the right track and if we're getting the reactions that we *want* from a design.

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    'Ah... I'm not really sure what the users will think!'  *Better test it.* 'Uh... too much fighting with our team internally over what to do!' *Better test it!* Usability testing helps you check in with your user expectations. And it's a way of you making  sure that you're not just stuck in your own ideas about a design and actually bringing in an  end-user from the outside to get some *more clarity and focus*. And the reason why this class is going to  help you is you'll benefit from the 15 years of my

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    personal experience and *hundreds and hundreds of  usability tests* that I've conducted over the years. We're going to start from the very beginning of  *how to create a test plan and recruit participants*, and then go into *moderation skills, tips and techniques*. You'll also learn *how to report on tests* so you can take that data and represent it in a way that makes sense, you can communicate to your team and learn how to *change your design based on the data that you get from usability tests*,

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    most importantly. I hope you can join me on this class. I look forward to working with you!

Where to learn more about usability?

For an in-depth understanding of usability, consider two courses from Interaction Design Foundation. Firstly, The Practical Guide to Usability offers a comprehensive overview of usability principles and techniques. Secondly, delve into Conducting Usability Testing for hands-on insights into user-centric evaluations. These courses equip you with the expertise to create user-friendly designs and analyze their effectiveness. Dive in and enhance your usability knowledge today!

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    When you create something, you design something,  you need to know if it works for your users. And you need to get that design in front of them. And the only way that you can make sure that it meets their expectations is to have them actually *play with it*. Usability testing is *the number one* technique for determining how usable your product is. We want to see how *successful* our users are, see if they're on the right track and if we're getting the reactions that we *want* from a design.

  2. 00:00:31 --> 00:01:04

    'Ah... I'm not really sure what the users will think!'  *Better test it.* 'Uh... too much fighting with our team internally over what to do!' *Better test it!* Usability testing helps you check in with your user expectations. And it's a way of you making  sure that you're not just stuck in your own ideas about a design and actually bringing in an  end-user from the outside to get some *more clarity and focus*. And the reason why this class is going to  help you is you'll benefit from the 15 years of my

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:32

    personal experience and *hundreds and hundreds of  usability tests* that I've conducted over the years. We're going to start from the very beginning of  *how to create a test plan and recruit participants*, and then go into *moderation skills, tips and techniques*. You'll also learn *how to report on tests* so you can take that data and represent it in a way that makes sense, you can communicate to your team and learn how to *change your design based on the data that you get from usability tests*,

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:01:36

    most importantly. I hope you can join me on this class. I look forward to working with you!

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Literature on Usability

Here's the entire UX literature on Usability by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Usability

Take a deep dive into Usability with our course Interaction Design for Usability .

This course will teach you fundamental usability concepts and methods and will tie them together with interaction and visual design. By completing the course, you will become equipped with the tools required to create products with outstanding user experience and usability. Your newly acquired knowledge will also enable you to reduce the costs, risk, and time required to design and implement such products.

You’ll learn to adopt a user-centered approach to UX design and usability so you can create user-friendly products that people love to use—for example, by allowing for user errors and providing timely feedback messages. More importantly, it is crucial that your entire team—developers, project managers, and product owners alike—adopt this holistic, user-centered mindset. This course therefore aims to provide any team member with just that: it will not only equip you with fundamental usability and design concepts, but also introduce you to lean and agile processes that will allow your whole team to become design-centric.

You should take this course if you belong to a team whose goal is to create a great product—whatever role you play in that. The fact of the matter is that usability experts and UX designers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the people who influence the design of a product. A sound understanding of user-centered design processes is thus greatly beneficial whether you’re a UX designer, developer, or a newcomer to design who wants to be part of a product team one day.

All open-source articles on Usability

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Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2016, June 1). What is Usability?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF.

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