|
|  |
User Experience (Usability)
309 hits
| Oct 14, 2003 1:12 pm |
|
re: Usability of Communication Effectiveness? |
Chris Nagele
 | |
I have a heard a lot of terms that describe the items below (customer experience, usability, user experience, information architecture, goal-directed design, marketing, copywriting, etc). Usability is by far the most widely used term for making sites easy to use and understand. In reality "usability" only describes the ability to find information. There is a different way to look at this though.
I find it very difficult to convince clients that simplistic and clear websites will improve their businesses. Most of the time I have to sell the idea to them, which is absurd when you think about it. Having a widely accepted term (like usability or anything else) helps set a common idea of our roles to the people we work with. If we continue to make new titles for our jobs we will just continue to alienate ourselves from those who need us most.
All of the items below are very important and include many different roles. Internally we can make up whatever name we want for our roles and responsibilities, but to clients, managers, and alike there must be a consistent message. If the term usability clearly defines this message then I am fine with it. If it does not, then it is up to us to communcate the right message. Making up a new term would just send us back to the beginning.
> 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."
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.)
>
>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 Nagele (new win) |
|
