Comments on: Usability in One Easy Step (First Draft) http://www.webword.com/wp/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/ The usability blog of John S. Rhodes Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:45:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: UXD - User eXperience Design http://www.webword.com/wp/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/comment-page-1/#comment-12282 UXD - User eXperience Design Fri, 07 Apr 2006 01:20:10 +0000 http://www.webword.com/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/#comment-12282 <strong>Designers on Joel</strong> Apparently we weren't the only ones to notice Joel Spolsky's rather empty observation on usability. John S. Rhodes over at WebWord also takes issue. He puts it very succinctly:If a software product is meant for thousands of users, exactly who Designers on Joel

Apparently we weren’t the only ones to notice Joel Spolsky’s rather empty observation on usability. John S. Rhodes over at WebWord also takes issue. He puts it very succinctly:If a software product is meant for thousands of users, exactly who

]]> By: Djeef Lavezzo http://www.webword.com/wp/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/comment-page-1/#comment-12281 Djeef Lavezzo Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:20:47 +0000 http://www.webword.com/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/#comment-12281 From a business perspective, managing your customer's expectaions is very important. In this case business people mean the folks paying the bills. In my experience this has to do with custom or mostly custom software projects. This is very important to the finances of a project. If a customer has incorect expectations, they will come back to you and demand changes at your expense to make the application meet their expectations. Translating this from a business to client relationship to a software designer to software user relationship, this means two things to me: 1) make sure you make enough effort ahead of time to find out what sort of expectations your users will have before they ever see your product. What pre-concieved notions do they have? Maybe this is market research? Maybe this is just looking at your competators, like your users probably have. Maybe looking at non-software analogs. 2) spend some time setting your users expectations. If your application is going to do some unuusual things, provide unexpected (innovative) features spend some time making it easy to introduce your users to those features before they use them wrong. Video tutorials aren't hard to produce with tools that do screen captures and record audio and save it as a flash swf file. Or just write a good manual... So, this article of Joel's... it's about Operating Systems... the whole thing. He knows his "expected" line is pretty much tongue in cheek. I "expect" he's going to clarify things in the near future... From a business perspective, managing your customer’s expectaions is very important. In this case business people mean the folks paying the bills. In my experience this has to do with custom or mostly custom software projects. This is very important to the finances of a project. If a customer has incorect expectations, they will come back to you and demand changes at your expense to make the application meet their expectations.

Translating this from a business to client relationship to a software designer to software user relationship, this means two things to me:
1) make sure you make enough effort ahead of time to find out what sort of expectations your users will have before they ever see your product. What pre-concieved notions do they have? Maybe this is market research? Maybe this is just looking at your competators, like your users probably have. Maybe looking at non-software analogs.
2) spend some time setting your users expectations. If your application is going to do some unuusual things, provide unexpected (innovative) features spend some time making it easy to introduce your users to those features before they use them wrong. Video tutorials aren’t hard to produce with tools that do screen captures and record audio and save it as a flash swf file. Or just write a good manual…

So, this article of Joel’s… it’s about Operating Systems… the whole thing. He knows his “expected” line is pretty much tongue in cheek. I “expect” he’s going to clarify things in the near future…

]]> By: Chris Collingridge http://www.webword.com/wp/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/comment-page-1/#comment-12278 Chris Collingridge Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:01:20 +0000 http://www.webword.com/2006/04/05/usability-in-one-easy-step-first-draft/#comment-12278 And similarly, my pet hate and a word I'm trying to ban (as getting people to use it properly seems an even greater challenge): intuitive. What is intuitive? Probably something that behaves exactly as expected! And similarly, my pet hate and a word I’m trying to ban (as getting people to use it properly seems an even greater challenge): intuitive. What is intuitive? Probably something that behaves exactly as expected!

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