April 17, 2001

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The Cosmic Usability Test

By Rusty Weston   (rweston@cmp.com)

You're on a shuttle between New York and Boston, scratching out an illegible memo on a Handspring Visor. You're not tall, but your knees are propping up the plastic tray. Your shoes are pinned between your laptop bag and the seat in front of you. You'd use a laptop, but then there's no geometric way to do so, what with the executive reclining in front of you.

In fact, there's barely room on your lap for the book you've been reading about usability. You can easily draw the connection: In a new survey of 500 InformationWeek readers--both business and IT executives--guess what's the top concern in the selection process of key IT vendors? Then you realize: You're not here on a business trip; you're really a crash-test dummy in a cosmic usability test.

Look around: Bad usability is more common than bad hygiene--except it's not so easily disinfected or brushed away.

I don't know if there's a good treatment for bad usability, but I suggest this therapeutic exercise. Make a list of the five worst examples of usability in your everyday world. Is it the airline seat on a Boeing 757? Is it everything about Lotus Notes? Is it that mystifying "universal" remote controller that's supposed to make you master of your entertainment center? What about the annoying dashboard on your friend's Saab? Your tax forms? Your Fidelity Investment statement? Your office voice-mail system? Or here's an offbeat but exasperating example: Navigating from any Delta gate to the cab line at the Atlanta airport. Does three quarters of a mile sound about right? (Send me your Worst Examples of Usability, to rweston@cmp.com.)

Look Ma, It's Science

Usability may sound like yet another techie buzzword, but what it represents philosophically is a willingness to maximize a user's experience, and thus heighten a product's effectiveness. This concept goes well beyond asking users where to place the navigation bar. It's more than a collection of rules that dictate the percentage of visitors you'll lose if your Web pages require excessive scrolling. The quality of the customer interaction is key. And usability is the science behind it.

Is usability important to vendors? It better be. In the same InformationWeek study of factors that influence IT vendor and product selections, usability was rated an average of 8.4 on a 1-10 scale, where 10 is extremely important. Actual satisfaction with vendor products' usability scored a more modest 7.4 on the same scale. As a long-time Lotus Notes victim, I think the respondents were being a tad generous.

As a movement, usability still has a long way to go. Someday soon, a business-management guru will write a book contending that the most successful bosses are experts in personal usability. Are you a usable manager? Do you have a nice interface? Are you interoperable? Of course, the analogy can only stretch so far, but the philosophy is probably true. Usability is a less mystical Feng Shui.

You may know good usability when you see or experience it. But how many of us actually spend the time or money to perfect it? Certainly not this airline carrier. The folks who run this outfit apparently don't realize that better usability enhances a customer's experience and impacts repeat purchases. Then again, they have the dominant market share in this corridor, so it's possible they know about the problems but just don't care.

Rusty Weston is editor of InformationWeek.com and InformationWeek Research.

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