Users And Usability

Although the sale of goods has long been the motive of manufacturers and merchants alike, but in an environment lacking competition, sellers are usually able to dictate the terms; put in another way, sellers and service providers are able to operate without paying too much attention to the well being and desires of the buyers. The increasingly saturated commodities and services markets, however, have made consumer the focal point of the efforts from the conception phase of the service or product. Since the popularization of consumerism, where essential and nonessential products and services are designed, packaged, and promoted in a manner to generate interest and increase sales¹, the consumer has, more or less, taken the center stage. With this shift in attitudes to commerce has emerged the field of usability, the principles of which allow companies and service providers to ascertain the marketability of the product, or service, and its fitness for purpose. Although the discussion of the principles of usability and their application in the context of computer applications would take place in the ensuing sections, but before proceeding any further, you need to develop the appreciation that how an ordinary user complicates the situation for the designers of general purpose computer applications without doing the same for designers and manufacturers of other commodities and services.

Computer User – The Many Forms

Whenever the term computer user is used, most people conjure up an image of a person who boots up the device with the sole intention of browsing the web and who struggles to locate keys on the keyboard during any such usage session. Although such individuals would always be around, and, of course, there would always be people who are starting out and hence just getting acquainted with the system, but the reality of the matter is far from the image associated with the very word.

As of today, computers in the form of PCs have been around for well over a decade, in reality, close to around two decades now. Since their miniaturization, they have slowly but surely been finding a place in almost every office, and students of all fields these days find using Google, Yahoo, or Bing far easier and instantaneous in terms of results than going to the library and conducting a manual search for material on the current or next topic of discussion. Although an ordinary computer operator is not expected to know much about the inner workings of the system, but the keyboard proficiency of that worker would more or less startle a person who has never used a computer; same goes for the students of those fields that are not even remotely related to computer science. With the use of the device so widespread in certain sections of the society and not so essential a part in other sections, the person using the computer, the general computer user, exists in at least a few different forms. With the foregoing indicating the existence of a general user in many forms, in order to ascertain the appropriateness of an application from the competing brands, the first step needs to be proper categorization of the general computer user.

Based on all the aforementioned facts, ordinary users can be classified into three broad categories:

1. Beginner or absolute casual user
2. Mid-level or moderately proficient user
3. Expert user or the power user

1. Beginner – or The Casual User A person who is starting out as a computer user or has been using the computer solely for causal browsing would fall in the category of casual users. Whichever subcategory the user belongs to, at this stage or with this mentality, such a user, to accomplish most of the tasks, relies on the mouse. Hence, a beginner or casual computer user is a person who at present is not a proficient keyboard user and has no qualms whatsoever about the use of the mouse.

2. Mid-level User – The Moderately Proficient User A person who has been using a computer for some time and in the process has become a three finger typist and acquired some knowledge of the computer system would qualify as a moderately proficient user. Although, at this stage, a user becomes more interested in accomplishing most of the tasks using just the keyboard, but does not consider occasional reliance on other peripheral devices a hindrance or a cause of performance degradation.

3. Expert User – The Power User A touch typist, by choice or because of job requirements, who at this stage and with this level of proficiency wants to rely on just the keyboard for all the tasks and has ample knowledge of the system settings personifies the power user. A power user even starts to consider the mouse a device forced upon him or her by the corporate world: a device that has been on a life support system kept operational by the unwillingness of the multinationals to accept such a user’s existence.

A person belonging to any of the aforementioned categories while using an application that is not essential to the job becomes an ordinary computer user with a bias towards an input device. Such a person, while using the application, judges the usability or ease of use based on his or her biases, and those biases play a part in the selection or rejection of the said application. In the context of this guide, web browser is the application that would remain the subject of scrutiny.

While reading the guide, you need to maintain a distinction, at all times, that an ordinary user’s interest in computing entirely revolves around either the fulfillment of nontechnical job requirements or the fruition of personal endeavors, whereas an educated computer user’s interest stems from a formal training in the field of computer science or a personal desire to gain an intimate understanding of the technology. An educated computer user, therefore, is thoroughly aware of the workings of the system and is not afraid to fine-tune the system in order to make it work for him or herself; the knowledge needed to make those changes and the confidence that comes with it define the educated user. Consequently, an educated user would be inclined to adapt the system to his or her exact needs. Based on this desire to adapt the application fully, an expert user would more often than not prefer a pliable implementation over an implementation that does not expose its internal mechanisms. An ordinary user, on the other hand, would either try to find an alternative or continue to suffer because of the unawareness, which limits such a user’s productivity.

As the aforementioned enables the ensuing discussion from the point of view of various types of users, hence the hope is that it has helped establish the distinction between the ordinary computer users, in all their forms, and an educated computer user. Having furnished all of the information, including the ‘Intended Audience’ section, I would like to reiterate that the primary audience of the work continues to remain a nontechnical or ordinary computer user.

1.1  Crash Course In Usability

Before embarking on your short lived but hopefully rewarding journey, you should have a clearer picture of the destination than the one created by an appealing but vague title. With the work intended to create awareness via transference of knowledge, the destination for the reader becomes the successful acquisition of that knowledge and the resulting ability to apply the latest acquisition appropriately; the destination for the author becomes the effective delivery of the intended information. As the objective of this knowledge transference is to cultivate in a user a more refined appreciation of the usability issues concerning computer software design, hence, to achieve this goal, a crash course in usability becomes mandatory. As users spend most of the time using an application and interacting with it, therefore, study of the user interfaces that are part of an application remains the focus of the guide, with the remaining issues concerning software design receiving a compact treatment in the next installment. With the information in this section under your belt and an awareness of your position in the proficiency spectrum at hand, you should be able to relate to the rest of the material fully and evaluate the application interfaces critically and to your advantage.

Usability

Usability primarily concerns itself with the ease of use of the objects and artifacts designed, or being designed, for the use of the masses. Usability, or ease of use, of an artifact designed for use by a general user and with the ability and psychology of one such user in mind can be judged on the basis of following criteria²:

1. More efficient to use
2. Easier to learn
3. More satisfying to use

Before the start of a more thorough discussion of the usability criteria, the understanding needs to be clear that for mainstream usability evaluations, all the three criteria become applicable only for the artifacts designed for general users. Based on the artifact in question, a general user can exist in various forms, or have various definitions (for a description of various forms of a general computer user, refer to the previous section). Although the information in the ensuing section would clarify the following, but continuing on the premise that usability criteria are applied in relation to the audience of the artifact, within the scope of software interface design intended for general users, the three items that form the basis of most of the usability studies carry the following explanations:

1. More Efficient to Use When compared with an application or software that provides similar functionality but targets a specialized user base — for example, trained software engineers or software developers — software designed for ordinary users should be more efficient to use. Software products aimed at a highly informed user base rest on the premise that the users would have enough knowledge to use the product efficiently even in its most bare form; general users, on the other hand, stop using such a product usually after their first encounter with the system.

   A good example to illustrate the preceding statement would be a comparison of the Linux operating system, known as an operating system for programmers by programmers, with Windows based operating system. To operate Linux in its bare form, still preferred by the hardcore programmers, a user needs to know specialist commands to perform simplest of tasks including storage and retrieval of data, which, by any stretch of imagination, remains the most basic task; to make changes to the system configuration successfully, the user needs to learn complete programming languages. In case of Windows based system, however, menus or dialogs containing textual instructions and accessible via keyboard and mouse allow easy execution of instructions; the point-and-click execution makes calibration of system configuration far easier. To operate the system, an acquaintance with the simplest of devices, usually the mouse, and the courage to use it allow smooth operation. This Windows based model, designed from the ground up to appeal to the masses, makes the whole system more efficient to use straight out of the box with rare or no need to rely on the user manual; as a user of one such system, I have never felt the need for a user manual.

   Efficient to use takes a new form based on the age of the system, the popularity it has gained during that time, and how well known and well established the methods introduced by that system have become. The new form that results from this maturity and associated popularity is the by-product of the periodic changes that original manufacturers or the competing startups introduce to improve the system based on the user feedback or, mostly in case of the startups, to put a stamp of individuality. These changes, especially in the areas that require direct user interaction, can make the system inefficient to use, at least initially, by placing additional demands with respect to learning new routes or additional commands to accomplish the same tasks. Although only through experimentation can better ways be found, but on occasions, the invention can purely be driven by a desire to put a stamp of individuality on a system. In such a scenario, even when the alternative, or the latest version, has new and better features, the learning curve can eventually prevent widespread adoption of the system. Although, on occasions, the benefits offered by the latest developments and features in the current release can outweigh the associated learning demands; on other occasions, however, considerable new offerings fail to get noticed because of the desire to reinvent the wheel, in this case, the established ways. This form of inefficiency can be described as “The Surprise Factor”: I am trying to accomplish the same task that my previous software allowed me to do, but the key combination that I used to employ to accomplish the task is not working in the latest version. In such a scenario, the user then first has to establish whether the new installation is faulty, or have the application developers been able to invent yet another way of accomplishing the same task. The time needed to ascertain the cause of the problem and then to learn another way of doing that task can, on occasions, prove to be a significant efficiency bottleneck. Because of all the aforementioned reasons, this surprise factor can prove to be the deciding factor between a hit and a miss, on occasions confining to oblivion a product that otherwise had some decent features, too.

2. Learnability – Easier to Learn Continuing with the comparison introduced previously, in case of systems intended for the masses, a casual user has to learn just the use of a pointing device and make sense of the information that appears in relevant dialog boxes; information almost always is in clear English, making the system available to high-school students, as well. This interactive approach to task completion and system configuration management renders unnecessary the need to learn any specialized instruction sets or computer languages. With the exception of the components at the core of the operating system, when using a Windows based system, learning a domain-specific word or two emerges as the only requirement for smooth operation; most of the time, just the selection of the right option from a list enables the person to operate the system successfully. The essence of the criterion is that an artifact designed for the masses should require the least amount of learning possible for efficient operation, and what so ever user has to learn, it should be based on methods and techniques already known to the general population. This approach enjoys near perfect realization in Windows based operating systems, where just the knowledge of English enables a user to operate the system easily by selecting appropriate options when interacting with the system, or for that matter, when interacting with any application installed on the system.

3. More Satisfying to Use In order to make the software appeal to a broader generic audience, especially in the face of increasing competition, software makers have started to pay more and more attention to the aesthetic appeal of their products. This increased investment of resources in improving the aesthetic, or visual, appeal hinges on the premise that a visually appealing application would garner a more satisfied and devoted user base than an application that is just fully functional. A fully functional product that is aesthetically appealing than its competitors provides critics, as well as the current users, with extra reasons to talk about and praise the artifact in question, thus increasing the likelihood of its widespread adoption.

Summation

Ease of use, learnability, and elegance determine the usability of an artifact including software products. With an increasing number of companies and individuals now offering products that allow general users to accomplish exactly the same tasks and in almost the same manner, which involves the use of interactive interfaces that require minimal learning, the elegance of design is more or less becoming the deciding factor.

In order to make their products standout from the pack, software companies have started to invest in and make prominent the functionality that allows a user to adapt the application’s interface to his or her liking. Throughout this guide, this feature would be known as the adaptability factor, or the adaptability of the system. As the ability to adapt the interface can tremendously influence a person’s desire to persist with an application, it would form an integral part of the criteria that would be used to judge the user friendliness of the system.

Usability and Web Browsers

By now, you must be thinking that how can the discussion of an application with such a minimal interface result in so much text? If you are not, however, then before going any further, just stop for a moment and think about it: in its actual form, when being used for the principal purpose, the browser window consists of an edit box, which is called the address bar, and a few, these days just a couple of, buttons, and, essentially, nothing much else. However, the features and interfaces whose existence has spawned this book remain inextricably intertwined with the core analysis that takes place in the third chapter. Because of the material’s strong association with that core part of the book, for a thorough introduction, you, the reader, would have to wait till then.