Week Five

Usability 101: Introduction to UsabilityWhat is usability? How, when, and where can you improve it? Why should you care? Jakob Nielsen defines key usability concepts - give to your boss or anyone else who doesn't have much time, but needs to know basic usability facts.

Thinking About UX Research and Usability

Each week, you should spend some time thinking about the course material before you come to class. To help facilitate that thinking, please post your thoughts in this discussion forum. Your thoughts will help prime our discussion in class. You are welcome to share any thoughts you have, but please make sure to respond to the following questions:

(1) What surprised you?

I am surprised about the Microsoft money and time that was spent for research to develop the new battery inserts called InstaLoad. It seems link they just scraped the final product and didn't try to implement it just like this short clip:

The 5 Components:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

I think that the third component has two parts to it. Part A and Part B:

Part A is stated already in the article: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?

Part B (However): Is the memorable satisfaction one feels that draws them back to the product, kind of almost like a taste of chocolate.

Also, Why hasn't Microsoft attempted to release these types of InstaLoad products into the market? Did they run texts on the market and they failed? Are they waiting for a distant future release date to strategically implement?

(2) What do you wonder?

I wonder if the third component has two parts to it?

(3) What are you struggling to understand?

What I don't understand from the author is: "If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

He seems to desire to fix our light switch problem but I/m not sure we have one. I think things are fine the way they are. I am all about cost effectiveness and perhaps the author has a vision for the future and can see what will soon be, but I'm not going to go there right now.

He is, however, helping me to think outside of the box and look into possibilities that I never have considered before. So that is good about this reading, I just don't understand if we have the right problem to figure out a solution. Perhaps it is just a symptom of some other problem that has not yet been made known.