Alertbox - Usability

In this article, Dr. Nielson talks about the importance of usability in web design. When a designer makes their page with a high degree of usability in mind, it’s therefore much easier for the average user to accomplish the things that they want to do on that page.

The idea of usability is defined by five key components:

Learnability – ease with which new users can perform basic tasks with the new design.
Efficiency –how efficiently users can they operate a design once acclimated to it.
Memorability –how fast users can re-acquaint themselves with the design after a period of inactivity.
Errors – the amount and severity of errors made by users, as well as the recovery time, while using the design.
Satisfaction – how pleasant the design is for users to operate.

Usability is crucial within a web page because if a navigator can’t get done what they need to quickly and efficiently, they’ll leave. Therefore it’s crucial, especially for commercial websites to have simple usable designs.

Error management is also important. In the process of designing a page, developers should routinely test for bugs and usability issues by not only looking over it themselves, but by having it tested by normal internet users.

While I’ve had usability issues with my web pages in the past, I’ve made an effort to prevent such occurrences now. I plan to implement the suggestions of this Alertbox article into my own developmental processes immediately.