Simply put, usability is what human visitors of your site perceive in terms of their use of your website or app.
Website usability is often mistaken for another connected way to deal with website design: user experience (UX). Website usability is best considered as a subset of UX, in that UX for the most part signifies a more extensive field of study and plan than simply web interactions. UX incorporates everything from human-machine interactions to the human studies of man-made brainpower. Most instructional classes in user experience say that the knowledge applies to an expansive scope of contexts and gadgets, not simply websites.
Did you know?
You really just need 5 users to test for user experience. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources.
Source: Nielsen Norman Group
Source: The ACM Digital Library
What is UX (User Experience)?
User experience is a persons' feelings and attitudes toward using a specific product, software or service. It encompasses the experiential, functional, interactive, valuable, and important aspects of product ownership and human interpersonal interaction.
While usability may incorporate many different aspects of web design like aesthetics, functionality, or user experience design.
In the following sections we will discuss the basics of user experience design. How do we know that the user experience design presented to us by an advertisement is user experience design? What are the factors influencing a user experience design? What does user experience design have to do with search engine optimization (SEO) and how can we optimize our website for user experience design? These are just some of the questions we will try to cover.
User expectations are a set of rules or policies that dictate the expected behavior from a user. They can be very general like "the user should be able to easily find the menu bar," "the user should be able to navigate the list of commands without hitting any buttons," "the list of commands should be easy to follow," "the user should be able to perform all the functions without searching for them." These user expectations are usually presented in a logical manner so that users won't get confused when navigating your site. This kind of logical structure is called a user guide or UML.
User Interaction Design is all about designing interaction strategies that fully support the established user expectations. These strategies must be considered in depth and included in the definition of the product or services you're offering. It's usually done by integrating wireframes and manual pages into a full-featured website. Wireframes provide the interactive prototypes that can be seen by the client and/or developers. Manual pages provide the information that users need such as tips and tricks, instructions and tutorials.
Usability testing is one of the components that define the best practices in the usability design process. This is the process where you'll have the chance to see how the website will operate in real users' hands. Usability testing is a combination of different techniques to test how users will interact with your website. Web designers use white-box usability testing, cross- browser usability testing, and other testing methods to ensure that the website will be most suitable and user-friendly for your potential customers or clients.
Usability Engineering
Usability Engineering or user experience engineering is the application of research in the human digital experience theory. The goal of this approach is to create a digital product that will meet the needs, expectations, and goals of the users while providing a positive user experience. Usability professionals also incorporate usability testing to assess how well the digital product meets user needs. Additionally, they also include process improvement or instructional design. These are just a few of the techniques that these professionals apply to help you achieve a better online presence and increase conversions.
An effective Usability Professional always focuses on the user experience from design planning, usability testing, and polish. He or she will determine the business goals, objectives, and critical success factors. From there, the professional will work closely with the designer to deliver the new digital product. Once the application is released, the professional continues to monitor its performance. If changes are required, then he or she will make them.
In short, UX designers work on the interactions between people and technology. Their main focus is on how to design a site and its interfaces so that people will not get tired of using it and will find it easy to interact with it. Their recommendations to improve the usability of the website will be reflected in the results.
What is Interactive Design?
It is a scientific discipline concerned with designing computer or human-computer interaction systems such as websites that are both usable and enjoyable for the users. It is a subset of usability, which studies how people comprehend and utilize technology.
What is interaction?
Interactive systems are constructed so that they satisfy the needs and desires of their users. Interactivity designers identify and design systems for activities that users will perform. Interactivity designers also evaluate how these systems satisfy users' needs, expectations, capabilities, resources, as well as the organizational and communicative requirements of organizations. These professionals help to build user experience designs (UX), which are meant to provide a comprehensive and integrated experience for the user.
How do we use interaction design?
Interaction designers can help you create a user experience and then improve your web pages, applications, interfaces and more so that your website performs better than ever before. The interaction designer's job is to think about how you want your website to work. They need to think about the users, their behaviors, their preferences and their expectations. Designers develop and deliver UIs or user experiences that can be used in multiple environments such as personal computers, digital signage, mobile devices, handheld devices, point-of-sale systems, manufacturing automation systems, interactive television systems, media devices and so on.
So how do we make our websites more user-friendly? Interaction designers are trained to think about the usability challenges and then design solutions that deal with five dimensions of usability, visual design, usability testing, information architecture and pre-attentive processing. Let's take a look at each of these five dimensions in turn: Visual design. What are visual design and what makes it so important? This is what designers focus on and create.
Visibility is the first things that come to mind when thinking about visibility. What are interactive design and how do we get more of it? We have to think about making our website's less visible to visitors. Visitors to your site won't appreciate something if they don't even know it exists. As much as possible, they have to find your website first and foremost.
Visibility and usability are also related to users' satisfaction. Satisfaction is one of the five dimensions of user enjoyment. What does interactive design give to our visitors? It can provide more ways for users to feel more comfortable with using our products. Better navigation and more options in using physical objects are some of the things that can be provided.
Pre-attentive processing refers to the process of anticipating what physical objects will do in response to specific instructions. Our new visitor will enter the website through a few specific steps. Based on the information they have accumulated, the designers will model their site in such a way that they can fulfill the needs of the visitor the most effective way. The interaction designers we hire are responsible for modeling these interactions so that we can create better websites. They make sure that all five dimensions of usability and visibility are satisfied.
If your website has user experience problems and need a solution, please reach out to me.