The Paradox of Usability
I was reading a post the other day on the usability of tabbed browsing, and it got me thinking about one of the true paradoxes of usability: nothing is really usable until you learn how to use it. Maybe that's not so much a paradox as a Catch-22, but it's still early and the caffeine is just kicking in, so let's not argue semantics.The point is that virtually everything we use has a learning curve, and to really understand usability we have to measure it at stages along that learning curve. I don't expect to open up a piece of software like Adobe Photoshop or Mathematica and instantly and intuitively understand how they work. That's not to say that key features shouldn't be readily apparent, but those products are complex and feature-rich (and should be), and that takes time to discover.
Part of our job, then, in the usability community, is to determine what kind of learning curve we can expect from any given product. For example, an expert system, such as an F-18 combat display, is going to have a steep curve. It's designed for highly-trained specialists, and no one is going to wander off the street and just start piloting an advanced fighter jet.
This also helps explain why software usability can be very different from website usability. When you buy a piece of software, you're expecting it to perform certain functions, and you're willing to invest some time to learn those functions. When you visit a new website, on the other hand, unless you know exactly what it is and what you want out of it (or it has a very strong brand), you expect to find what you need quickly. Those of us in the website usability camp have to deal with much less patient users with a wide range of ability and comfort level.
Dr. Pete
· Wednesday, March 7Thinking about this made me realize how different software and website usability are sometimes. As you say, software has its interface conventions, and you can often transfer learning from similar products (or products by the same vendor), but many of those conventions are different than what you find on the web. Now that Web 2.0 apps are becoming more popular (Google spreadsheet, for example), it'll be interesting to see where the two areas converge.
Mike Maddaloni
· Wednesday, March 7Or if they will... not to be a pessimist, of course!
Many times when people develop new technology or applications, features are more important to them than usability. It's really cool that I can get streaming video to a phone, but if that video is the size of a postage stamp and cannot see it when I am outside in the sun, so what if I can get the Today Show on my phone?! Of course if you go to the other extreme and follow strict usability to the letter, then you may not have a commercially viable product.
In there is a balance, and for those who find it, they will succeed. Hopefully I am one of them...
mp/m
Ron Denholm
· Wednesday, March 7Hi Peter,
Congratulations on launching such a well written site! We monitor thinking quality at Oracep Technologies. Here are your stats so far:
Split part 1 88%
Split part 2 88%
Split part 3 93%
Split part 4 94%
Irritability 64%
Bookmarking 78%
Usability 90%
And our 'Coning' scale:
Less then 49% high level background/minimal analysis
50-59% mid level background and low level analysis/judgement
60-69% mid level background/mid level analysis/low level judgement
70-79% low level background/high level analysis/mid level judgement
80-100% low level background/high level analysis/high level judgement
Dr. Pete
· Wednesday, March 7Ron, I've seen your Coning scale pop up over at John Battelle's search blog, and I've always wondered what it means. Is that purely a measure of the analysis, or is it contextual in the content domain? Practically speaking, I'm wondering if that metric has a relevance to search marketing.
Ron Denholm
· Wednesday, March 7It is a contextual measure, interpreting Bloom's cognitive domain with algorithms. I enclose a description . We are about to launch a demo. I'll contact you as soon as we've ironed out a few browser problems with Outlook.
What is Coning?
Coning is a new and novel natural language technology that will revolutionise the way in which we work with information: specifically identifying thinking and meaning. Coning works on textual documents at the paragraph and whole-of-document level. A number of indices are calculated:
Coning Index - the key index used to rank thinking within a body of text.
Paraconing Index - is a
Chris R.
· Thursday, March 8You made some very good points.
With the abundance of information that we have at our fingertips, a website has a very small window to grab a user's attention.
The window for sofware is a little bigger, but again, because of the Internet, competition is usually abundant. So it can't be too esoteric.
Greg Scowen
· Friday, March 9Thanks for mentioning the post Peter.
I read your remarks above with interest and agree 100% about what you are saying. It indeed makes things very hard for those of us involved in website usability. Trying to please so many people, with so many different needs... ouch.
You mention Web 2.0 and how things may change. I am actually conducting research on that this year for a dissertation. If you want a copy of my findings let me know. I hope to produce something interesting that will affect us all.
Dr. Pete
· Friday, March 9I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about your research (I'll send you an email on that). I think we'll see a lot of blurring of the lines between websites and software in the next few years, and it'll be interesting to see how that imapcts usability practices on both sides.
Laurence Veale
· Saturday, March 10"I don't expect to open up a piece of software like Adobe Photoshop or Mathematica and instantly and intuitively understand how they work"
I agree, they're complex pieces of software, but why doesn't PhotoShop instantly and intuitively understand how I work?
(I'm still on version 8, yet when I try and save an image as a gif I'm hit with four dialogs. When I try and put a stroke on an image, it always seems to be red and 3-point. Granted, there's probably a way to alter this if I ever get around to RTFM, but the main point I'm making is that the software is getting in my way by default. Just my two cents (of the euro variety)
Dr. Pete
· Sunday, March 11@Laurence: I absolutely agree that, on the flip-side, a complex and expensive piece of software should meet the user halfway (or more). I was also disappointed by a recent usability experiment Adobe ran that crashed my machine and pretty much broke (temporarily) Creative Suite.
Mike Maddaloni
· Wednesday, March 7I know when I visit a site, I have an expectation that I will be able to find the information I want. I have similar expectations for software. With software, you will usually find certain functions grouped together in a similar place from application. With Web sites, that isn't necessarily the case.
The challenge is knowing the target audience and what their expectations are, then meeting them. My guess is that holds true for aprplanes, but I have never flown one myself. :)
mp/m