Usability - the origins and foundations of usability. Refusal of sudden changes. How a person perceives information
Jakob Nielsen
Usability is a qualitative attribute that determines how easy a user interface is to use. The word "usability" also refers to a set of techniques used to improve an interface during the design process.
Usability has five quantitative components:
* Learnability: How easily can users complete basic tasks when encountering an unfamiliar interface for the first time?
* Efficiency: Once users are familiar with the design, how quickly can they complete the same task?
* Memorability: After a user returns to the interface after a certain period of time, how easy will it be for him to regain his skills in using this interface?
* Errors: How many errors does the user make, how serious are these errors, how easily can the user correct these errors?
* Satisfaction: how pleasant is the user to use this interface?
In addition to usability, there are many other important qualitative signs design. One of the key ones is utility, which describes the functionality of the design and answers the question: is the interface what the user needs? Usability and usefulness are equally important: what good is a program, even if it's easy to use, if it doesn't do what you need? A program that hypothetically does what you need, but you cannot work with it because of its complex interface, is also bad. To study the usefulness of a program, you can use the same methods that you use to study the quality of its usability.
On the Web, usability is a necessary condition survival. If a website is difficult to use, visitors will simply leave it. If home page The site does not clearly and clearly state what the company does, and what tasks the site allows to perform, visitors leave. If the site is confusing, visitors will leave. If the information on the site is difficult to understand and does not respond to key issues visitors, they leave. There are no such visitors who carefully study " reference guide on working with the site” or spend their time mastering its interface. IN Web is complete There are plenty of other sites out there, so leaving a site is the first instinct visitors have when they encounter a problem.
The first rule of e-commerce is: if visitors cannot find a product, they will not be able to buy it.
Today's experience shows that approximately 10% of the project budget should be spent on usability. On average, this will help to more than double the quality of a website, and a little less than double the quality of an Intranet site. For software and other products, the degree of quality improvement tends to be a little lower, but still significant.
When developing products for internal use Consider that improving usability by 2 times means reducing the time for training users by half, will allow you to double the sales volume, the number of registered users and orders, and in general, increase by 2 times the result that you expect to receive from the project.
There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and most useful is user testing of your design.
It consists of three elements:
Select users that are most typical for your project/product, for example, visitors to commercial sites or employees of your company who often use the Internet (in the latter case, those who do not work in your department should be selected);
- Ask them to perform the most common tasks;
- Keep track of what users do, where they succeed, and where difficulties arise with the interface. Be quiet and listen to what they have to say.
The most important thing is to test with each user. Let each of them independently solve the problems that arise before him.
If you help them or draw attention to some specific element on the screen, you will ruin the test results.
To identify the most serious usability problems, it is enough to involve 5 users in testing. Instead of spending money on a large, expensive study, it is best to conduct several small tests and make changes to the design after each of them, so you can immediately correct the identified errors. This incremental design method works best to improve the quality of the final product. The more versions and ideas you roll out on users, the better.
Usability plays a role at every stage of the project. Assessing the quality of the interface at each stage is just one reason why I recommend conducting multiple, quick and cheap tests. This is what it looks like:
Before starting to develop a new design, test the old design to identify good moments, which should be left or strengthened, and bad points that cause difficulties for users.
If you are not working on an intranet project, research the designs of your competitors to get cheap data on possible options interfaces that have the same functions as yours.
Test in real conditions to evaluate how users interact with the interface in their workplace environment.
Create paper prototypes of one or more design options and test them with users. The less time you spend implementing an idea, the better, since you will still have to change the design based on test results.
Hone in on the ideas that perform best across multiple tests. Gradually move from a sketchy design on paper to a more detailed and detailed one on the computer. Conduct tests at every stage of change.
Check the design for compliance with generally accepted usability rules.
Once you've decided on your final design and implemented it, test it again. There are always minor errors at the implementation stage.
Don't leave testing your design with users until the very last moment. If you do this, most critical errors that will be found during the test will no longer be correctable. Many of these errors will be structural in nature, and you will have to redo everything all over again to fix them.
The only way to get a high-quality user interface is to start testing from the very beginning of the project's development and continue testing at each stage.
Order an audit of your website from Webcom Performance, our staff will conduct a detailed analysis of all website parameters and provide you with detailed report with recommendations for correcting errors on the site, improving the structure and functionality.
Good day, dear readers. I think all of you have heard the word usability. Many people even know what it is, but some only think they know.
It so happened that in my practice I had to come across very closely not just the concept of usability, but to analyze the site, express my opinion and give recommendations for improvement. Moreover, I analyzed it not from the point of view of web design, but from the point of view of the effectiveness of the site as a business tool.
The most difficult thing for me in this situation was not identifying problematic issues on the site, but explaining why it was considered problematic.
Naturally, I’m not going to pretend to have deep knowledge of website usability and I’m not going to compete with specialized resources on this topic. The few publications that I will devote to usability will be more about organizing my knowledge, consolidating the topic and cheat sheets for the future.
I also note that I consider this topic not so much from the point of view of a web developer and web design, but from the point of view of an Internet marketer.
That is why in the previous article I shared, which explains the view on usability described below.
I'd like to start by saying that most of the information about usability on various web design blogs is just the tip of the iceberg. This is due to several reasons, and one of them is that usability is not some kind of ease of use of a site that any web designer can come up with, it is a separate large-scale direction in development software, which employs real professionals - usability engineers.
A little history of usability
Of all the definitions that I came across on the Internet, in fact, none of them was a definition. those. It cannot be said that usability is the science of..., or usability is a set of measures....
Of all the variety of definitions, for now I decided to focus on the definition international standard ISO 9241-11, according to which:
Usability is a degree with which the product can be used certain users in a certain context of use to achieve certain goals with due efficiency, productivity and satisfaction.
But I decided to look for other definitions, which is why I delved into the origins and found out that usability is part of microergonomics, which in turn is one of the sections of ergonomics. Finally, I came across a word that I understood, which also had a scientific basis and terminology.
In a past life, I was supposed to become an artist-designer and in the process of studying I gained knowledge about what ergonomics is - a science that studies the interaction of a person with surrounding objects (maybe the definition is not the most scientific, but it conveys the essence).
Have you ever wondered why the steps in your entrance are exactly the same height as they are? Doorways are never at the same size as a single bed. All sizes of objects are a consequence of the science of ergonomics, even though they appeared several thousand years before it itself.
Any modern development, firstly, it is always designed taking into account the size of the average person, and secondly, it undergoes thorough testing for ease of use.
With the development of technology in ergonomics, a direction has emerged - microergonomics, one of the areas in which is the design of interfaces. This is where the word usability arose.
As I said above, it was not for nothing that I published a previous article about Internet marketing, in which I shared my vision of this topic. And discussing the topic of usability from the point of view of Internet marketing, I came to the conclusion that to a greater extent usability is an analogue of our word “quality”, i.e. phrases: site usability And site quality are essentially equivalent.
I have already touched on the topic that for any business. The better quality your instrument is, the best results you can achieve.
Those. a quality tool is one that performs its function: for an online store this will be sales; for a website design studio - direct customers; for a blog - subscribers.
Accordingly, the user constantly interacts with the site, and the easier and simpler the interaction is, the higher quality your tool - the site - is, which means the better the usability of your site.
The most important thing is why I devoted so much time to my thoughts and searches, so that you learn for yourself that usability is not just " convenient menu on the site", but a measure of the quality of the entire site in terms of human use.
The result of interaction is the satisfaction of the needs and requirements of the Internet user (), which ultimately brings profit to companies that develop their business through the Internet.
Once again...
You can't say "the site has good usability" about a site until you get real evidence that the site brings value to the user. Accordingly, depending on the site, the benefit is - obtaining information, making a purchase, etc., i.e. everything that leads to the satisfaction of the needs and requirements of the Internet user.
It would seem that all the conclusions have been drawn, and now everything should be more clear, but that was not the case. After all, all people are different, and everyone has their own measure of quality. For some users one thing will be convenient, for others another. But the usability of the site, like the quality of the site, cannot be measured; all this is relative values. All that remains is to understand, regarding what? The answer is relative to what was or is originally.
And this is the second reason why many people have the most superficial knowledge about usability. As I already said, usability is a huge layer of research, statistical and analytical information in software development, including web development.
To answer everything possible questions research, surveys, testing and data analysis are carried out. To do this, entire groups of researchers and developers work on the issue of usability, and thousands of users participate in testing. But, unfortunately, such large-scale research can only be undertaken by large companies. But, naturally, this does not free every site owner to think about the usability of their resource and conduct their own mini-research and testing. To do this, we need to know the basics of usability and be able to use tools with which we can test the resource.
Usability Basics
Usability is built on five basic principles; on the Internet you will find them called factors or components of usability. In my opinion, the word “principles” more accurately conveys their essence.
The first principle is learning. This, of course, applies more to complex interfaces; it is very relevant for CMS administrative panels, accounts in various exchanges, and statistics systems.
For example, they often complain about the interface Google Analytics, that it is difficult to understand or, as the tweeter is complicated for many. This is a clear example of the first principle of usability, when a user experiences difficulties when registering on a site for the first time.
Although, in my opinion, the example is not the most successful, because... According to my personal observation, the difficulty lies not so much in usability, but in the not very successful Russification of foreign resources, and partly in mentality. For comparison, the Yandex Metrics interface, in my opinion, is much more convenient, and you immediately grasp on the fly where and what is located, and you start using the system without any problems.
And then it starts to work The second principle of usability is efficiency.. I, as a user, can say with confidence that I effectively use Yandex Metrica, having once learned how to work with it. This means that the developers did a good job with the second usability principle. Also, once you understand the tweeter, you realize that it is very simple and you begin to use it effectively. What I can’t say at all about Google Analytics, when I seem to have studied everything, understood everything, but at the same time I’m sure that I’m not using even half of its capabilities.
And every time I start working with it, I make sure to click a couple of times in the wrong place or spend a long time going through the entire menu to find the report I need. This situation depends entirely on the execution The third principle of usability is memorability.. For example, in the example given, I have trouble remembering where each report is located. I find some reports quickly and without problems, but I spend time searching for others. Is this my problem or the developers' problem? In fact, there is no definitive answer, and this is a question I will explore in a future post.
The fourth principle of usability is errors.. Here, I think, errors such as useless extra clicks are also taken into account, i.e. the user himself makes mistakes due to poor learning and memorization, and server errors, for example, the same is a server error and its absence can affect the user’s loyalty to the resource.
Last, The fifth principle of usability is satisfaction. Moreover, it is worth noting that I can be satisfied or not, as process use and result. And if, for example, for me the process using Google Analytics is complex, so I am completely satisfied with the result of interaction with this analytics system, and, depending on the tasks set, I can be satisfied to a much greater extent than from using Yandex Metrica.
Does Google Analytics cope with its task when learning, efficiency and memorability are not so good, but the user is satisfied? I think he's coping.
Thus, having understood all the fundamental principles of usability, I return to the fact that site usability and site quality are synonyms that determine the degree (measure) of user satisfaction with the site and, as a result, the performance of the site’s functions. And as you and I already know, the performance of the site’s functions promises the site owner an increase in profits.
By the way, it is very clear from the principles that initially usability was not used for web resources and all the problems that the user faces when working with the program interface are visible. On the other hand, I brought illustrative examples the fact that modern web resources have very complex interfaces and it is very important that developers do not forget about the basic principles of usability.
Considering the above, so that our understanding of usability for websites is more complete and understandable, in the next article I will tell you what rules apply when developing a high-quality website. These rules will be more focused on websites and expand upon the principles of usability themselves.
Stay in touch and good luck moving forward.
IN modern world Understanding the basics of usability is a must. Most website visitors do not take the actions that resource owners expect from them. People don’t order goods, don’t register, don’t subscribe to updates, etc. What is the reason for this user behavior?
The reason is simple - the resource turns out to be inconvenient for the user. For example, in order to “order” a product, you have to go through several pages, and the registration button is completely impossible to find. This makes the resource uncompetitive.
How to reduce the number of refusals to use the site? If a project needs a thorough approach, you can contact the studio and specialists. Usability labs offer not only various options testing and interface design. And if your budget is limited, you can try to learn the basics of usability yourself.
To develop an interface yourself, you need to consider a few simple rules:
- Rule of 7.
It is known that the abilities human brain not limitless. A person is capable of holding no more than 5-9 entities in short-term memory. Therefore, you should not place more than 7 items in the navigation.
From this point of view, the site tutu.ru certainly deserves good reviews, since the main functionality was placed in the site header, limited to 4 menu items and a drop-down list.
While the Russian Railways website is an excellent example of what not to do. The amount of scattered information makes your eyes dazzling, you just want to close it and never enter again. - 2 second rule.
The less a user waits for a response from a program, website or application, the greater the likelihood that he will not give up using this product. 2 seconds is the optimal time interval for the program’s response, and this is what you should strive for. So you should think a hundred times before installing a heavy flash screensaver on your site, as they did on mtv.ru. - 3 click rule.
Nobody likes to surf pages looking for the necessary information and functionality. The visitor should be able to get from the main page to any other page of the site by making no more than 3 clicks. This also contributes to more successful indexing of the site by search robots. - Fitts rule
A model of human movement published by Paul Fitts in 1954 determines the time required to fast travel into the target area as a function of distance to target and target size.
Metaphorically, the rule can be explained as follows: it is easier to point to a lighter than to a match. But pointing to a cliff or a huge airship is equally easy. If an interface object, such as a link, is already large enough, there is no point in making it even larger. - Inverted pyramid
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen himself adheres to this principle. The article should begin with a summary statement, followed by key points, and end with the least important information for readers. This is optimal for the web, where the user wants to get information as quickly as possible.
Testing consists of four stages:
- Focus group selection. Testers must match your target audience. You shouldn't ask grandma to test an application to find driver updates.
- Drawing up a test plan– a list of tasks for which your product is designed. This is the list that testers will follow. If you are running an online store, the list should include such tasks as searching for a product, obtaining information about a product, the path from receiving information about a product to ordering it, and removing a product from the cart.
- Testers complete a list of tasks and fix errors. Anything can be considered an error: a captcha that is too complex, a lack of a message from the server that “an item has been added to the cart,” the inability to change the number of items in the cart or cancel an action, etc.
- After identifying and correcting errors, the testing cycle must be completed again. The cycle must be repeated until the results meet the necessary requirements.
As a rule, 5 testers are enough to identify major bugs.
Example on topic
Finally, let's look at typical mistakes using the example of the site of the famous performer Vlad Topalov. Suppose we want to arrange a performance with his management and want to find their contacts on the website. And this is where the quest begins!The first thing we see on the site is a black splash screen with an “enter” link and a proposal to update the flash player.
The “enter” button sounds like a call to get to the main page of the site. But instead of the main page we find ourselves on a “blank slate”.
Here the image of a red ribbon catches our eye, and we, of course, think that this is a link, and maybe even to a menu. But no - this is just a symbol of the fight against AIDS, which is intended to indicate the singer’s social position and nothing more. And then the hand reaches to the left top corner. And there’s not a menu at all, but a button full screen mode. A few seconds of confusion, and the search is over, the coveted menu is at the bottom, in the center of the screen. Click... and see the PLAYER! We have been deceived again.
While the clip is broadcast in the player, we continue to search for the menu. Now it is at the top, in the very center. In the drop-down list, we finally see the coveted word “Contacts”. But even here, not everything is so simple. These contacts cannot be copied. You'll have to rewrite it manually!
Now about the numbers. The waiting time for a response may vary depending on the connection speed, but in any case it will be more than 2 seconds. And the path to the management contact page took 7 clicks. Or it could take just one.
Vlad Topalov, of course, can afford such “creative” solutions. But it is obvious that such decisions are simply disastrous for business. 11/17/14 2.8K
Click on the link - view - close page - search again. We perform such actions every day, visiting hundreds of sites, almost without thinking. Some resources fly by “like plywood”, while others are added to bookmarks. It seems that this process is difficult to comprehend; some are simply lucky and others are not.
If you enter any query in the search, you can get the result great amount sites from suitable information. But for some reason the same resources are popular, leaving competitors far behind.
This superiority is even more clearly manifested in the service sector, when some online stores sell a lot and at high prices, while only immediate relatives buy from others.
So why do people go to some people and stay for a long time, while they run away from others like fire? The answer to this question is the same as to “Why did you buy this sofa and not that one?” Because it's more convenient:
The comfort of the sofa is expressed in the softness of the fit, ease of transportation, non-susceptibility to contamination and “ How does it match the color of your eyes?! The usability of the site is responsible for such factors in web development, and a person working in the field of Internet business must understand the basic principles of ensuring the convenience of resource users.
What is usability
Usability should be understood not only as specific technical points, with the help of which the convenience and ease of use of the site is ensured. Applicability in the environment for which the project was developed is also taken into account. In other words, the requirements for a sports news website and video hosting will be completely different.
In order to understand the difficult issue of user preferences, it is worth highlighting the basic principles of website usability.
- Content. The information content of a resource is the basis, the core, without which the site makes no sense. It is important for visitors to easily perceive the text and extract everything from it. necessary information. If this does not happen, the person will not rack his brains again and will go in search of something more understandable;
- Functional. Anyone who has written a couple of programs in life can say with confidence that nothing works right away. Errors can be obvious, or they can hide and reveal themselves at the most crucial moment. During the operation of the site, especially in the first stages, shortcomings are constantly identified, and it is very important for developers to respond to them in a timely manner. If some function of the site does not work ( or is executed incorrectly) for a long time - even the most dedicated users will not understand this and will be merciless;
- Cross-browser and platform independent. If you think your loved one Internet Explorer- the one and only, then ask Bill Gates for a pie from the shelf:
It is important to ensure the correct display of the site in all most popular browsers. Concerning operating systems, then it’s worth remembering something other than Windows or enjoying a second pie.
There are, of course, noble perverts who can perceive red text on a green background, but most visitors will refuse such pleasure. In addition to color solutions, the site design implies mutual placement " building blocks» pages such as menu, logo, text field and so on.
It is important to understand that the visitor is able to positively evaluate originality, but within reasonable limits. The design should highlight the information rather than take center stage.
- Navigation. Visitors want to know their location and also understand where to go next. The presence of areas that are difficult or impossible to reach significantly limits the capabilities of the resource.
- Structuring information. Everything in the world is subject to logic, and informational resources should not be an exception. As the user moves deeper into the site, the user should receive more and more details on the issue under consideration. For example, a visitor searches for “ What meat to feed sheep“, then the starting point should be the section “Mammals”, and the ending point should be the subtitle “ What do sheep like for an afternoon snack?».
Why is this so important
Despite the fact that people use the Internet, many sites are not created in order to discover something new for a person or expand existing information. Everyone is hungry for money, and is constructing their resources for advertising.
It would seem, why follow usability standards if the site is not created for the benefit of humanity, but solely as a source of income?
- Usability affects conversion. If a page is created for the user to take some action, then he must find, understand, think, perform and do all this quickly. If the visitor is confused even for a second, this may force him to leave the site;
- Usability affects traffic. If a user has a positive experience while visiting your resource, he will not forget the pleasant experience. A site where everything is clear and actions are completed quickly will become popular. If it is uncomfortable to be on the pages of the resource, and it is inconvenient to perform actions, you will be content with one-time visits and a bad reputation;
- Adding advertising should not reduce traffic. Usability rules provide for the proper placement of objects on the page. If the site has grown to become the first advertisers, then the banners should be harmoniously combined with the main content of the resource.
We should not forget that even if a site is created to make a profit, without visits there will be no money. Therefore it is necessary to create maximum comfort for users so that they choose your resource.
How to achieve convenience
If we talk about the specific usability framework into which the site should fit, then it is necessary to take into account the functional requirements that visitors place on the pages of the resource. There are some important practical points to note.
Online store
When a site needs to sell something, in addition to the general norms, there are specific features. Let's look at the basic usability rules for online stores.
- High-quality visualization of goods. When a person spends his money, he should know what. Nice photos will help awaken the visitor's purchasing interest. But it is worth remembering that the image must correspond to the real object;
- As much as possible fast loading pages. If a person decides to buy, it is important that nothing stops him;
- The more the buyer knows about the product, the better. You should carefully work out the description of all the details, then the trust of visitors will increase significantly. For example, it will be very useful for customers to know whether a product is in stock;
- Help your visitor find the product they need. Quite difficult to create convenient navigation with an abundance of categories. When a user views information about a specific product, you should unobtrusively offer him similar ones. Perhaps in this way a person will find what he needs or think “ Should I buy both??»;
- The elements responsible for performing targeted actions must be clearly identified. The “Buy” button should immediately catch the eye, because it is the purchase that you are seeking from the visitor.
Audit required
A website usability audit is a comprehensive study that can be used to identify resource problems in terms of usability. You can do this work yourself, but it is better to entrust the work to people competent in this area.
They will determine user needs and compile a detailed report, which will include:
- Analysis of the audience for which the resource is intended;
- Tasks that the site performs;
- Full description and analysis of functionality;
- Analysis structural organization and recommendations for its improvement;
- Some tips for attracting advertisers;
- Technical parameters of the site;
- Analysis of the structure and content of content.
Also applies quantification speed user interface. The calculation takes into account:
- the time the user spends deciding to take an action;
- button press time;
- transition from one input device to another;
- time spent searching for an element on the screen.
How to test usability
To obtain the most complete data for further improvements to the project, it is necessary to conduct site usability testing. It consists of subjective user assessment individual pages or the entire resource as a whole.
You can select respondents yourself, or you can use the services of special organizations. There are also online services that can help you conduct quality testing.
Below are some of them:
Thus, analyzing the usability of a resource allows us to identify the main problems in terms of user convenience.
You can entrust site testing to experts, do it yourself, or use the help of online services.
For Internet sites, users are clients, and the client is always right.
Good bad
Briefly: What is usability? How, when and where can it be improved? Why should you even care? This article provides answers to these basic questions.What
Usability is qualitative sign, which determines how easy the user interface is to use. The word "usability" also refers to a set of techniques used to improve an interface during the design process.
Usability has five quantitative components:
- Learning ability: How easily can users complete basic tasks when encountering an unfamiliar interface for the first time?
- Efficiency: Once users are familiar with the design, how quickly can they complete the same task?
- Memorability: Once the user returns to the interface after a certain period of time, how easy will it be for him to regain his skills in working with this interface?
- Errors: How many errors does the user make, how serious are these errors, how easily can the user correct these errors?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it for the user to use this interface?
In addition to usability, there are many other important quality attributes of design. One of the key ones is utility, which describes the functionality of the design and answers the question: is the interface what the user needs? Usability and usefulness are equally important: what good is a program, even if it's easy to use, if it doesn't do what you need? A program that hypothetically does what you need, but you cannot work with it because of its complex interface, is also bad. To study the usefulness of a program, you can use the same methods that you use to study the quality of its usability.
Why
On the Web, usability is essential to survival. If a website is difficult to use, visitors will simply leaving from him. If the home page of the site does not clearly and clearly state what the company does and what tasks the site allows you to perform, visitors leaving. If the site is confusing, visitors leaving. If the information on a website is difficult to understand and does not answer key questions from visitors, they leaving. Did you get the idea? There are no such visitors who carefully study the “reference guide for working with the site” or spend their time mastering its interface. The Web is full of other sites, so leaving a site is the first instinct visitors have when they encounter a problem.
