About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 75. Chapters: Affinity diagram, Affordance, Attitudinal analytics, Baby duck syndrome, Banner blindness, Bodystorming, Card sorting, Cognitive dimensions of notations, Comparison of usability evaluation methods, Component-based usability testing, Dancing pigs, DWIM, Eating your own dog food, Edge case, ELMER guidelines, Eye tracking, Flexibility-usability tradeoff, Heat map, InstaLoad, Interaction design, Intranet design annual, Jaime Levy Russell, Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant), Jan Chipchase, Jared Spool, List of human-computer interaction topics, Living lab, Look and feel, Natural mapping (interface design), Needs analysis, OpenUsability, Partial concurrent thinking aloud, Personalization, Persona (user experience), Pictive, Process-centered design, Progressive enhancement, Project Oxygen, Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS), Reactive system, Readspeaker, RITE Method, Safety assurance, Scenario (computing), Seven stages of action, Spatial file manager, System usability scale, System utility (system engineering), Think aloud protocol, Tree testing, Universal usability, Usability engineering, Usability goals, Usability lab, Usability Professionals' Association, Usage-centered design, Use-centered design, User-centered design, User (system), User analysis, User interface design, Use error, Web accessibility, Web usability, World Usability Day. Excerpt: Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job function by designers, technical writers, marketing personnel, and others. It is widely used in consumer electronics, communication, and knowledge transfer objects (such as a cookbook, a document or online help) and mechanical objects such as a door handle or a hammer. Usability includes methods of measuring usability, such as needs analysis and the study of the principles behind an object's perceived efficiency or elegance. In human-computer interaction and computer science, usability studies the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site (web usability) is designed. Usability differs from user satisfaction and user experience because usability also considers usefulness. The primary notion of usability is that an object designed with a generalized users' psychology and physiology in mind is, for example: Complex computer systems find their way into everyday life, and at the same time the market is saturated with competing brands. This has made usability more popular and widely recognized in recent years, as companies see the benefits of researching and developing their products with user-oriented methods instead of technology-oriented methods. By understanding and researching the interaction between product and user, the usability expert can also provide insight that is unattainable by traditional company-oriented market research. For example, after observing and interviewing users, the usability expert may identify needed functionality or design flaws that were not anticipated. A method called contextual inquiry does this in the naturally occurring context of the users own environment. In the user-centered design paradigm, the
