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User Experience (Usability)
297 hits
Oct 10, 2003 5:55 am |
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re: Usability of Communication Effectiveness? |
Chris Hubbard
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Jeremy,
Good post. Got me to thinking.
I've reread your post three times. It looks to me like you're mixing "value" with "usability".
Usability is the study of how people use things, or not use things as the case may be.
Something with high usability may or may not have more value.
This is important, and almost universally misunderstood, so worth repeating.
Usability does not equal or relate to value.
Most of the things you cite are already covered in the discipline of "information architecture".
You can use a classic usability study to test the language of a site/paragraph, etc., to determine which wording is best for your intended audience. You can also test (albeit subjectively) the "impression" or the "user experience" of the site.
Usability is a fairly rigorous methodology for testing specific actions and tasks.
It is the practice of formulating specific questions/hypotheses/theorums and testing them in controlled environments.
The testing is done by developing tasks, that if performed demonstrate a proof (either negative or positive) of the question/hypothesis/theorum.
How well people do at said tasks, and the overall effectiveness of the product, are unfortunately open to the interpretation of the data gathered during usability studies.
Luckily the better designed and structured the study, the less interpretation needs to be done.
Usability can not test for questions like:
"Is the site credible?", or
"Is the site relevant?"
Those are way too general.
As for your specific points:
Credibility: there's nothing that I know of that tests for this with a rigorous methodology. And I disagree with your point. A site will low credibility will test poorer than a site with high credibility (I've seen it happen)
Relevance: there's nothing that I know of that tests for this with a rigorous methodology,
Again I disagree. Usability is certainly negatively impacted by irrelevant content, or positively impacted by relevant content.
Language: there's nothing that I know of that tests for this with a rigorous methodology,
again can make or break usability.
Word Structure: the only tool I've ever found is reading out loud. (BTW I am a published author, I've contributed to eight books.), and again can make or break usability.
More on this later maybe,
Chris
> jeremy swinfen green wrote:
> Kyle kindly invited me to join this group and I have already found it useful.
>
>When I joined I posed Kyle a question about the word "usability". I said: "...let's get away from the word usability: it is true that getting people from A to B on a web site is important but the experience and communication they get while navigating is also paramount. I don't think the word usability conveys that. We should be talking about "communication effectiveness" which would encompass issues like targetting and relevance, credibility, ease of reading text, effectiveness of the text in persuading or conveying information etc."
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>Of course I agree that if a site has bad architecture and a user can't complete their desired task then the site is not usable. But let me give a couple of examples why usability alone isn't enough.
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>Credibility: If the same data is assigned different values in different places on a web site, or if the website has a date stamp that is perhaps a year old, or if the website is full of spelling mistakes, or if it makes obviously absurd claims
>then this will reduce credibility, and hence the value of the website. Usability is in no way diminished by this.
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>Relevance: If a website is aimed at two very separate audiences (say consumers and investors) then each audience will be able to see content that is aimed at the other audience. In this case, investors won't necessarily get negative messages from reading material aimed at consumers. But our audience of consumers may well get irritated by being told that the company is making lots of money out of them! Usability is in no way diminished by irrelevant content.
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>Language: If you are selling, then you need to sell! A website can be highly usable in terms of search, check out etc, but if there are no calls to action on the site then it won't make many sales. When selling things on line the rules of direct marketing are really important. Usability is not affected by ineffective language.
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>Wording structure. We all know that writing for the screen is a special skill. And yet it seems to me that usability doesn't really address this as it addresses function, which won't be influenced by the use of long sentences and paragraphs with multiple ideas etc. At a pinch I am willing to have my arm bent and admit that this could be included within the term "usability" (but in practice I don't that many usability people I have come across have ways of evaluating the readability of text in terms of wording structure.)
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>I think there is a big opportunity for the usability community here. Currently the discipline is perceived as a bit geeky and technical. In fact it is about very practical issues. (As we all know!) But by expanding the areas we cover off to include a wider, holistic assessment of communication effectiveness (rather than just navigation, design and functionality) we would help to make the discipline better understood by people outside the IT/web design and build industry. And I believe we would do a far better job for our clients.
> Private Reply to Chris Hubbard (new win) |
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