Comments on: What is usability?

By: What is Usability? | UXWeb.info

What is Usability? | UXWeb.info — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:00:22 +0000

[...] definitions, talks about why usability is some important, and has some fantastic examples too. Link – Trackbacks Posted in User experience (UX) | Permalink. ← Halo effects, pilot [...]

By: Happy Friday! - Kilian Walker's Design Related Blog - Nailkita Designs

Happy Friday! - Kilian Walker's Design Related Blog - Nailkita Designs — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:12:57 +0000

[...] A review on Usability: http://www.intuitionhq.com/blog/2011/05/what-is-usability/ [...]

By: Jacob Creech

Jacob Creech — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:55:00 +0000

Interesting point, Nik. I wonder how many people feel that way? I (obviously) use a Mac for 99% of everything I do, and the things you point out don’t bother me.

However, I can certainly appreciate that it would both some users, and they might well not be motivated enough to make those changes.

I guess what we can take from this is that usability can also be subjective to some extent, and based on a whole range of different factors. Is there any product at all that people would say is universally usable?

Thanks very much for sharing.

By: nik_c

nik_c — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 16:44:00 +0000

Interesting how different people perceive software application (be they OS’s or web applications, web sites, etc.)

I started off using Macs when I was in music production, then switched to PCs 10 years ago because I was doing a lot of CD Roms, DVD ROMS, and recently have come back to Macs because I am doing a lot of video editing on Final Cut Pro.

Initially I thought ‘Wow – Macs, the best things on earth’ (that was coming to it from an Atari), and I did not thin much of PCs.

However, coming back to the Mac from Windows is a serious let down. The Mac OS still seems to treat the user like a little child in a sweet store, everything moves up and down, screeches, sweeks, or makes some other sound effect, and is visually far too animated to not be irritating to me.

And the thing is – I am sure we can customise it to not be so FULL ON, but using these computers as a tool – do I really want to spend hours trying to figure out how to make my computer not to behave like a Christmas tree …

So this is a point well worth taking into consideration and I am sure we will all take this into account when we do our usability developments…

By: Jacob Creech

Jacob Creech — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 23:24:00 +0000

Thanks very much for your very thoughtful comment. Of course, the more familiar you are with a device, or the more experience you’ve had, the easier it will be. But something usable should be accessible to all, regardless of experience.

I think sometimes PC and Tablet makers decide to jam as much functionality as possible into their devices, without considering if the functionality is actually useful or not to the end consumer. That ZTE tablet looks guilty on that count. Thanks very much for sharing.

By: Aldis

Aldis — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:51:00 +0000

Interesting and useful post, that outlines some major points about Usability. But usability of a product or website depends on people and their knowledge. For some mac is easy to use, understand and operate, for some it’s very hard. For experienced (long-time) internet users using a website is very easy, for a first time internet user a website could be hard to use, even with a good user interface.
Another thing about usability is that, in my opinion, is very hard to create a good looking site, which would have perfect usability. Maybe it isn’t hard (because of great examples out there), but it takes a lot of time.
While writing this comment I remembered an example, in my opinion, of bad usability. The tablet (or a mobile phone ?) ZTE V9. As I can’t find direct link to the product on official site I will point the first review I found on Google - http://www.netbooknews.com/13992/zte-v9-and-z-pad-7-inch-android-tablets-hands-on/
The thing I found unusable and also funny is calling option, in my opinion, nobody should’t put this option in tablet.

By: Jacob Creech

Jacob Creech — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Thanks Jerry. Any tools or sites you find super-usable that you’d like to recommend?

By: Jerry York

Jerry York — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:54:00 +0000

Usability, The measure of the ease of employment of a tool by a person to do a task.

By: Jacob Creech

Jacob Creech — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:34:00 +0000

When I say popups, I mean like the little warning dialogs that pop up in Windows – which is obviously OS related…

By: Ryan Margheriti

Ryan Margheriti — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 07:33:00 +0000

its a bad example. website popups still would have plagued macs back in the day, but they are a distant memory for any decent browser using person these days. they have nothing to do with the os.