In our day to day work, we often talk about usability. We talk about user-friendly approach, easy navigation, user-centric design, color theories, design principles and many other things.  But, what exactly usability is? Is this about technology, design principles or human perceptions? Let’s find out… 

What is Usability?

Usability measures the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a product or system – Be it a web site, a software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.
In general, usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. — www.usability.govUsability has five quality components:

• Learnability: How easily users can accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly and efficiently can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of time, how easily can they recall and reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design? User Experience!

Utility is a key factor, which refers to the design’s functionality: Does it do what users need? Usability and utility are equally important: It matters little that something is easy if it’s not what you want. It’s also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can’t make it happen because the user interface is too difficult.On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

The Goal

The overall goal is to create content that is perceivable, operable and understandable by the broadest possible range of users and compatible with their wide range of assistive technologies, now and in the future. The basic principles include:

1. Content must be perceivable.
2. Interface elements in the content must be operable.
3. Content and controls must be understandable.
4. Content must be robust enough to work with current and future technologies. 

Usability is now recognized as an important software quality attribute, earning its place among more traditional attributes such as performance and robustness.  

The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either. So let’s make it a habit to follow basic steps and enhance user experience.  I am sure it will be WOW!! Experience; and not OUCH!! J