Just to be more specific… the ‘ease of doing’ could not entirely replace ‘ease of learning’ because it doesnt take account of a) the internal sense the user has that they know how to do thing, and b) people could get a task done, but having misunderstood how they did it. So the ‘ease of doing’ measure does not (to my mind) transcend the ease of learning. But, of course, it is very useful and complementary.

Efficiency of use and pain tolerance also seem to be complementary, rather than the latter replacing the former.

Memorability and recommendability: this is interesting. As I understand it, memorability is a totally different type of measure than recomendability. Just because someone says or does actually recommend the site, that says nothing about how easily the person could use the system again in the future – which is an important measure.

Also, more rounded thinking would include asking “Why worse?” rather than just “Why better?”.

Thanks
A,

Revisiting: How good is the system at making it easy for humans to connect to each other?

I need to noodle more on this. I don’t think I have it quite right.

Here’s the next stab: How well does the system help forge both implicit and explicit connections among users? How much does the system convert discreet connections between users to fluid connections? Collabonetworkability would be the measurement of communication flow between users.

Let’s break this down yet another way. How is the usability of networked life measured? We all need to admit that usability is still very much tied to ergonomics, meatspace, and standalone applications. Usability doesn’t effectively address human collaboration in an increasingly networked world.

And, as I’ve stated many times in the past, it doesn’t effectively reflect business and need for profits.

Regarding collaboration and networkability, social bookmarking is an interesting topic. How good is the system at making it easy for humans to connect to each other?

A rather slick example is the following. Tagging is mostly selfish and egotistical, yet the cumulation of tags benefits all. Overall system usability improves as users tag, which means that users benefit from the collaboration and connections. Unintentional usability or emergent usability. Sweet!

Maybe that is what all of this is about. Greater usability emerges as users focus more on their own wants and needs, as long as collaboration and networking are natural parts of the system. Stated differently, you don’t always need to predefine or predict or bake usability into a system as long as users are able to connect to each other as they think and act.

There’s one where users contribute to the integrity of the data (think Wikipedia or social bookmarkting).

2nd and 3rd are conversations (think blogging à la Cluetrain), one where users converse for the development of your product or service, and the other where users converse for the sake of conversation.

I would think the first two easily falls into usability. The latter one would fall under the “Desirable” part of Morville’s definition of User Experience Design.

What do you think?

I think perhaps it is different in two key ways. First, as you point out, New Usability, Neo Usability, Usability 2.0, or Whatever You Call It, is tied to cost, money, profits, value, and as you state, cost-effeciency. Peter Morville hits on this with “Value” when he describes User Experience Design. The bottom line is the bottom line, which is neglected with usability.

But, I think there there another dimension that is missing, namely Human-to-Human Connections. More broadly, it might just be a matter of looking at usability beyond one user. People talk to each other. Organizations are connected. Groups work collaboratively. Usability typically fails to capture this. Usability is about connections, particularly human connections.