Putting user-friendly back into usability
Digital technology may be incredibly smart, but it makes its users feel incredibly useless, says User Vision, a consultancy that helps companies make their software and other products easier to use.
Tenth on the user-unfriendly items list are nondisposable nappies. The disposable variety ranks as the second-most user friendly gadget, topped by “armed” corkscrews and followed by ready-tied bow ties.
The examples of how to please or irritate consumers were highlighted this week to launch a local Making Life Easy competition.
The contest leads up to World Usability Day on November 14, which promotes user-centred designs and is being supported by events in 30 countries.
For SA’s contest individuals, companies and educational institutes can enter software, websites, marketing material and even architectural designs they believe are extraordinarily user friendly. Since the contest is supported by the Computer Society of SA, entrants must have used IT to create their designs.
Details are available from www.worldusabilityday.co.za.
“Every person who uses something has the right for it to be useable, whether it’s software or a wine glass,” says Darelle van Greunen, the co-ordinator of World Usability Day SA. “Usability isn’t a trivial matter; it affects everybody’s lives. Our aim is to create an awareness among designers who design for the sake of design without considering end-users,” she says.
Van Greunen, a technology lecturer at Nelson Mandela University, tells her students that if their parents cannot use the software they are developing, it is a failure.
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