What is Usability?

Usability is how effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily a user can interact with a user interface. This could be a website, an application, or any other form of human-device interaction. To put it differently, usability is how quickly and efficiently your users are able to accomplish their goals, and how satisfied they feel afterwards.

A user’s experience with a given product is like a journey from one place to another. The user’s starting point is wherever they are when they set a new goal, whether they are already in your application or somewhere else. The ending point, then, is where they are when they accomplish their new goal. The “usability” of your website or application is a representation of how smoothly this journey goes.

In addition to measuring whether a user can complete their journey and how smoothly it goes, usability considers how much smoother the journey becomes over time when repeated. Developing a highly usable product is about designing paths that not only guide users reliably to their destination but also make the journey an engaging and pleasant experience for rookie and veteran users alike.

Why Does Usability Matter?

Research shows that many users make decisions about whether to abandon a business’s website within one second of arriving there.

Imagine your user is walking through a hedge maze. A highly usable website gives the user clear signs and wide paths, so they always know exactly where they are going and never get lost. If possible, it even includes well-marked shortcuts they can use to efficiently get between specific points.

A website with poor usability is like an overgrown thicket, full of hidden pitfalls or confusing diversions. While an expert user might be able to quickly navigate the dense foliage by knowing a few key shortcuts, a newcomer will be lost and may abandon the quest entirely. In a worst-case scenario, they may even become confused and cause damage to their surroundings (“break something”)!

While a negative usability experience can directly and negatively impact a company’s bottom line, a positive usability experience can create a lasting impression and garner repeat business. Moreover, user interfaces with high usability tend to be more effective at achieving their objectives. For example, e-commerce websites with intuitive paths to purchase see consistently higher conversion rates.

Does my website have usability issues?

Assessing the usability of your own system can be a challenge; after all, you likely use it regularly and may have even designed it. As a result of this proximity, many businesses are simply unaware of the usability issues faced by their users.

Even issues that may seem subtle at first glance can have a significant impact on user satisfaction and general website performance.

Here are a few high-level business indicators that suggest your website may be facing usability issues:

• High Bounce Rate/Low Engagement Rate: A high bounce rate commonly suggests that users are not finding what they are looking for or are frustrated by the user interface. Examples of usability issues that are regularly associated with a high bounce rate include unclear navigation, irrelevant content, and slow page loading times.
• Low Conversion Rates: A “low conversion rate” is when users successfully navigate throughout your website but fail to take desired actions such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form.
• User Complaints and Feedback: Direct feedback from users, whether received through customer service channels or online reviews, can be a treasure trove of information about usability problems and should not be ignored.

High-level business indicators are an excellent tool for identifying that you might have a problem and should be sufficient to inform your exploratory decision-making process on their own. However, you may also be aware of some of the systemic issues to which those indicators point. Here are a few examples of what those issues might look like:

• Slow Page Load Times: Usability extends beyond the visual interface. Slow loading times can be a major point of friction for users, discouraging them from interacting further with your website.
• Inconsistencies Across Devices: If your website’s performance and appearance vary drastically between different browsers and devices, you are presenting a disjointed and confusing user experience that can lead to mismatching instructions given between individuals and may be highly jarring to multiplatform users.
• Complicated Navigation: Overly complex or unclear navigation can make it difficult for users to find the information they are seeking, leading to frustration and abandonment.
• Frequent Errors or Crashes: Even a single isolated website error or crash can create a breach of user trust, leading to the perception that the website is unreliable. If your systems exhibit an ongoing pattern of errors or crashes, users are even more likely to leave.
• Outdated Content or Broken Links: Content that is outdated or links that lead to nowhere can cause users to question the reliability and credibility of your website and can also be extremely frustrating. Your website shouldn’t feel like the Winchester Mansion!
• Lack of Accessibility: A lack of attention to critical accessibility features, such as alt text for images or easily readable fonts, can alienate users with disabilities. For those users, this is a significant usability concern (and may even represent a breach of your legal obligations).
• Inadequate Search Functionality: An ineffective search feature can leave users feeling unable to find the content they need. Even worse, it can lead users to believe that the content is not there when it is.

The above lists are not comprehensive; they are intended to give you an idea of the types of issues that may be impacting your website. If you are aware of any of these issues, or if you think your website may have other similar issues, we highly recommend that you contact Earthling Interactive for exploratory usability assessment services.

Why is excellent usability challenging to achieve?

Designing a product with excellent usability is a complex task. It requires a deep understanding of the product’s real-world users, including their behaviors, needs, expectations, and pain points. The diversity and dynamism of these factors mean a “one path fits all” solution can be elusive or even unrealistic.

Creating a highly usable interface is a balancing act. It is about providing enough features and information to serve users’ needs without overwhelming them, while also making the interface aesthetically pleasing and not compromising on functionality.

Another challenge in maintaining a highly usable system is that usability is determined by your users, and your users’ expectations are changing as quickly as the technology that surrounds them. The shift toward mobile browsing, for example, has necessitated a rethinking of previously desktop-centric layouts and workflows. In other words, usability is not just a one-off task, but a continuous journey.

Preparation

The journey to a highly usable interface begins, like most great journeys, with thorough preparation. First, we conduct stakeholder interviews to collect business goals for the product and the team’s expectations of how it was intended to be used. After the interviews, our team immerses itself in the website or software applications to be tested, getting a user’s-eye view of its strengths and potential shortcomings. This immersion enables us to corroborate any concerns the client might have and conduct hands-on system testing from a well-informed perspective.

Once we have a deep understanding of the systems to be tested, our team will work collaboratively with yours to design high-quality testing processes that avoid ingrained biases and reveal impactful data. These processes are tailored to fulfill your unique business objectives while incorporating modern usability best practices.

Scheduling & Testing

The next step in the Earthling Interactive Usability Assessment process is to schedule and conduct the usability tests themselves. In collaboration with our client stakeholders, we identify impactful test participant personas that we can use to identify specific test participants.

To ensure relevant user feedback, we will recruit and schedule a set of test participants who match the attributes of those exhibited by the product’s target audience. These test participants may also include product stakeholders, day-to-day operational users, and potential new users with fresh perspectives.

When scheduling usability tests, even the recruitment and scheduling processes can introduce subtle biases, which is why we take great care in structuring our initial conversations with participants to reduce any potential influence. By avoiding certain word choices and communication patterns, we can avoid prematurely introducing thoughts in the user’s mind that may muddy the data.

Finally, we will conduct the tests and measure the results. Each usability test follows industry-standard interview processes, designed to allow the user to interact with the system naturally while we observe and record their experiences.

Usability Report

After conducting usability tests, the findings will be normalized and analyzed, bringing together qualitative and quantitative data to form a comprehensive picture of the system’s usability. These findings will then be condensed into a single, actionable report.

Our Usability Report is detailed but straightforward, distilling our findings into clear recommendations for improvements in usability, user experience, and user interface. These recommendations are ranked by importance and impact, enabling clients to prioritize their response. The recommendations will be open-ended enough that your team will often be able to identify several viable paths forward, while still being specific enough that you will never be left scratching your head.

Once we have created the report, we will meet with your team to present it and make sure everybody is on the same page, fostering a collaborative dialogue on how you would like to move forward.

Design & Implementation

If you would like assistance implementing the changes recommended in the Usability Assessment report, our team stands ready. As a full-service software development studio, we have decades of experience helping our clients implement custom software changes across many different systems.

We often engage with our clients after delivering our Usability Report by designing concrete application changes that satisfy the findings in the report. Necessarily, the report will not get to the level of individual design choices, because there will be many ways to approach the findings and your team is likely to have opinions about the best options. However, many clients find they can benefit greatly by leveraging our experience navigating those options; that’s where our web design team comes in!

Once the findings in the report have been converted into actionable designs, our team is also available to help you implement those designs. Whether you have a development team or not, it’s okay; we can help. We can work with your existing team and within your process, bolstered by our own battle-hardened software development processes, to create high quality software implementations on an effective schedule and budget.

Iteration

Our most successful clients know that their website or application is only as usable as the users think it is; they also know that their users’ needs and preferences are always evolving. Periodic, lo-fidelity assessments are far better than no assessment at all; however, a consistent and rigorous approach to ongoing usability assessment is a critical part of maintaining a powerful online system that continues to provide you ROI.

For clients who want to invest in ongoing Usability Assessment services, we offer an iterative approach. This means we will periodically repeat a modified version of our full suite of Usability Assessment processes, leveraging insights from past assessments to make each iteration more efficient and effective. Our Usability Assessment clients understand that usability is not a static endpoint but a dynamic journey. We are here to accompany you on that journey by providing expertise, support, and a genuine commitment to delivering the best possible user experience.