Usability concepts and principles

Usability Concepts -- Reply to Posts

The ability to navigate through error conditions and quickly resolve them is critical to giving computer users control over their entire experience of using applications and systems. The fact that many software companies create applications that don't take into account error recovery conditions, often forcing users to seek out or Search and Destroy issues and problems is a case in point. If application developers thought more about the user experience they are delivering over and above what an application is supposed to do, error recovery would be much more navigable, intuitive and customer satisfaction would go up markedly (Jeffery, Figueiredo, 2012). The focus however in many application software companies, form those building personal productivity applications to the enterprise software vendors, often error recovery is a secondary concern if that. What needs to happen is that users need to hold software application vendors much more accountable as to their design workflows for recovery from errors. The very effectiveness of software programs hinges on this attribute of being able to recovery quickly and reliably from error conditions and allow users to continually work (Jeffery, Figueiredo, 2012). It is the exception rather than a rule to define the recovery of errors in an application regardless of its scope or complexity (McCullagh, 1981). If application software vendors want to succeed, they will need to create more effective means to recover from errors, regardless of their severity. The lack of focus on this issue is drastically also reducing the value of any software application and draining the valuable time of software users as a result. Change needs to happen quickly in this area.

Part II: Intuitiveness as a part of usability is indispensable to creating highly effective software applications. This is such a critical aspect of software engineering and development that it also needs to be designed in from the very beginning of an applications' initial stages of planning and coding. Intuitiveness from a design standpoint is critical for users to attain mastery of an application, and is especially critical during the system error and recovery processes as well. Contrary to the myth of usability being non-quantifiable, there are many excellent frameworks and methodologies for evaluating its total value and relevance to software design (Seffah, Metzker, 2004). The continual evolution of software is in fact starting to mimic the look, feel and navigational aspects of social media applications including Facebook, Twitter and others. Making applications easy to use, solve errors in, and quickly learned is what Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are concentrating on today. No longer is the design of any application judged by the depth and complexity of features, today all applications are increasingly judged by the level of usability and intuitiveness they provide. Through the use of methodologies and reach techniques that are based on social sciences incouding sociology and psychology, it is possible to quantify what intuitiveness is to a given group of customers or consumers (Seffah, Metzker, 2004). The need has never been greater for software companies to provide unique user experiences that can be easily tailored to their unique needs as well. The insights into intuitiveness need to guide these avenues of development, that give users the opportunity to create application interfaces that are more aligned to how they think and use software. That is the future of intuitive software design.