Usability is a term that most people have probably heard, but if pressed to provide an in-depth explanation of what it entails, would likely have trouble capturing its many facets. This is somewhat ironic, given its self-referencing nature: in the simplest of terms, usability describes how easy a given software application is to use. The difficulty in providing a truly modern and comprehensive definition arises from how complex the digital ecosystem has become: our devices, the applications and services we use, and even our own levels of sophistication and capability.
In the early stages of the internet, the Quality bar (as a formal criterion) was inherently low: task flows were short, interfaces were basic, and cognitive loads were light. As adoption grew and the tasks we wanted to complete online became more sophisticated, we began to pay more attention not only to what constituted success (the “happy path”) but also what varieties of obstacles we were inadvertently creating for ourselves along the way.
After the smartphone appeared on the scene, we leapt into a digital world that was never farther away than the device in our pocket. And the entirety of the business world as we know it rushed to pour itself into that hand-held viewport. Today, it’s difficult to think of a business model that doesn’t allow transactions to occur either in an app or online (and we’re often annoyed when we find one of those holdovers from the pre-digital days). For all intents and purposes, we’ve moved our lives into the cloud, with all the risks and rewards that shift brings.
In the fateful moment when the industry decided to include the word experience (as in user experience) into its qualitative analysis of software, it exploded the set of pertinent factors exponentially, including many that are beyond the power of software designers and developers to control. Conducting an exhaustive investigation into usability in the present day encompasses a daunting array of factors, each with its own multivariate states of nuance, in turn. Viewport size, resolution, operating system, network access, technical specs, use case context, level of urgency, task complexity, and on and on.
It’s safe to say this particular “ility” is a doozy, and it contains a secret hiding within..! (More to come on that in a bit.)
How best to deal with these challenges depends on the project development environment you happen to be working in: How big is your team? How much budget do you have at your disposal? Do you have a formal UX resource available? How tightly embedded into the project flow is that resource? How much do you and your stakeholders care? (I don’t ask that last question lightly; not every project has the luxury of existing within an ideal business culture.) The bad news is that even if your company doesn’t care, their end users do, and ignoring usability issues early on doesn’t mean they won’t come back around and cause more trouble later. As the old FRAM oil filter commercial pointed out, you can pay me now (a smaller cost), or you can pay me later (a much bigger cost)!
If you have a designated UX resource for your project, great! Champion that person’s involvement whenever possible, including support for user testing of iterative prototypes (if the budget allows). Insights gained directly from actual users are worth their weight in gold in terms of identifying what works and what doesn’t, what needs tweaking and what will be welcomed with appreciative open arms. Any pain points that can be caught and remedied along the way saves re-coding/refactoring after the fact, which equals less time and money overall, an outcome your stakeholders will embrace.
If you don’t have a dedicated UX person on your team, you might have access to UX evaluation via an internal team within your enterprise. If so, schedule reviews with them at milestones along your project path, and be sure to document their findings for future reference.
And if you are in the unenviable position of having no UX support at all, congratulations! You just earned your DIY UX badge. Take it upon yourself to explore usability questions whenever possible, and sharing out your prototypes around the office here and there is better than no user testing at all. Advocate for feedback channels to be put in place for users after product launch, so that as issues or pain points arise, there is a way to capture and document them.
At the heart of User Experience is empathy. We’ve all become more sophisticated users of digital tools and data in our everyday lives; we’ve developed relatively sensitive criteria for what differentiates a good experience from a bad one. Lean on your fellow team members and coworkers to catch the most egregious issues and seek to cultivate a willingness to gather user feedback on an ongoing basis.
As the discipline of UX has grown, there are many organizations and resources at your disposal to help you learn more about implementing its concepts into your work. Websites such as The Nielsen Norman Group, the Interaction Design Foundation, and the Interaction Design Association are good places to start.
And, if you just need help with a testing exercise or study, YouTube provides many helpful tutorials and walkthroughs.
Finally, at the risk of adding another meaty level to this seven layer chili recipe, did you know there is a hidden “ility” within Usability itself? (I warned you earlier about this nested Russian doll hidden inside). And that is Accessibility, how well your app or website adapts to users of varying physical capabilities. Interestingly, this area is so important and so large that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have been established and are routinely evaluated and updated by a governing body.
Color blindness used to be the relatively mild entryway into these issues for many designers and developers, but more and more front end libraries are including accessibility tools to help make compliance with WCAG guidelines easier. Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is another coding system designed to work with HTML that can help, when used correctly.
As mentioned, Accessibility is a topic much larger than can be covered here. We encourage you to learn more about the latest WCAG and ARIA standards and to encourage accessibility awareness within your company or organization.
At the end of the day, it boils down to the same common denominator: you. If you are interested in making your project a better experience for those who use it, change begins with small steps. Start the conversation at your next meeting, share out interesting articles or case studies you find with your teammates and stakeholders, evaluate and analyze what makes an exceptionally good app experience in your own life. Seek out other like-minded folks and start championing this worthy cause. It may be unreasonable to expect big changes right off the bat, but by raising awareness and committing to work on behalf of your users, you are moving the needle in the right direction.