Tag: Usability

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Ten ways to improve the usability of products that Agile teams build

Software development that uses a waterfall method is likely to deliver the wrong thing, too late. The intent of the Agile method is to deliver working software sooner, so the intended users—our clients and their customers—can provide feedback that steers us to deliver the right thing.

There’s a tension between delivering on time and delivering the right thing. In fact, the rush for on-time delivery can result in the wrong thing—an unusable product. There are ways to prevent this. User research is part of the solution.

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Poor usability is a form of tech debt

If you’ve worked in software development for a while, you may have noticed that work to address poor usability gets postponed more often than work on new features and functions. But this need not be an either/or proposition.

Postponed usability work – whether it’s identified by your customers or your user researcher – can be seen as a form of tech debt. It typically accumulates with every release.

Bike-tire pumpWhat contributes to this accumulation?

  • Poor timing or process. Some usability issues aren’t identified until after the product is released.
  • Pressure to get to market. There’s often pressure to leap ahead or catch up with competitors by adding new features and functions immediately.
  • Perceived relative value. If multiple teams compete for a share of development resources, a new feature may attract more funding than tech debt.

There is a path to a more usable product, at a low-to-moderate cost and with low-to-moderate risk. With every release, take some of the following actions.

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Predict your “usable release” date by integrating user research

A question that stakeholders, project managers, and product owners ask in common, when it comes to shipping or releasing software products:

  • When will it be done?

This question can be answered by using a burn-down chart. Such charts can also predict when the product will be a usable, quality product. To predict this, add certain user-research findings to the chart.

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If the user can’t use it, it’s broken

A few days ago, I tried to pump up my bicycle. I knew what to do: add air to inflate the inner-tubes. And I knew that I’d need a pump. I had to borrow one.

Bike-tire pumpThe connectors and attachments suggested this pump would fit two types of inner-tube valve as well as valves for air mattresses, footballs, and basketballs. So, an all-round useful pump.

But the thing is, neither the pump’s owner nor I were able to make it work. We couldn’t connect the pump to the valve. So I wondered, did the manufacturer test this product by putting it in the hands of first-time and occasional users, to see how it performed?

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A complicated interface is fixable

According to usability industry leader Jakob Nielsen, usability failures in software and apps are usually because the software:

  • solves the wrong problem.
  • has the wrong functions for the right problem.
  • makes the right functions too complicated to understand.

Nielsen’s last point reminds me of what a product manager once told me: many users of highly specialised software think of themselves as experts, but only few of them actually are. He believed elaborate sets of functions are too numerous or complex to learn fully. As user researchers and interface designers we can help solve that.
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Reduce spam without hindering usability

If your website lets visitors sign up, join in, or add comments and reviews, then—in addition to the legitimate details you want people to contribute—you’re getting some garbage. Some of this garbage is sent by spam bots.

Spam bots post content that detracts from your website. Spam lowers your site’s perceived quality. Spam posts may include links that pull traffic to competing sites or trick your visitors into a scam. The cost of spam is hard to quantify.

Plenty of experts recommend methods to avoid spam. But in a series of user research studies, I observed that anti-spam measures impose a cost of their own. They can add friction that causes visitor abandonment and attrition. The cost of this is easier to quantify.

Some anti-spam measures impose more pain than others. I decided to assess and compare them.

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When a user interface is for using—not for understanding—a product

The purpose of a user interface is not to explain how a product works. Instead, the interface is to help people use the product. Here’s an idea: if someone can use your product without understanding how it works, that’s probably just fine.

What model does the user interface reflect?

Models are useful to help people make sense of ideas and things.

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Natural mapping of light switches

I recently moved into a home where the light switches are all wrong. I was able to fix one problem, and the rest is a daily reminder that usability doesn’t just happen—it takes planning.

Poorly mapped light switches.
The switch on the left operates a lamp on the right, and vice versa. This is not an example of natural mapping.

On one wall, a pair of light switches was poorly mapped. The left switch operated a lamp to the right, and the right switch operated a lamp to the left. The previous resident’s solution to this confusing mapping was to put a red dot on one of the switches, presumably as a reminder. I put up with that for about three days. Continue reading “Natural mapping of light switches”

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A banister has multiple user groups

We don’t always know what a design is intended to convey. We don’t always recognise or relate to a design’s intended user groups. But we don’t have to know everything that an object’s design is intended to do, in order to make effective use of the object.

Video showing metal inserts in a wooden bannister.

I imagine the metal inserts in the wooden banister (see the video, above) are detectable warnings for people who are visually impaired, but that’s only a guess. If you watch the video again, you’ll see that the metal inserts do not occur at every bend in the staircase.

Whatever the intent, the banister fully met my needs.