Usability

Create an intuitive, user-friendly and attractive interface for your applications

If your employees or customers don’t like using ready-made applications and programs, perhaps they aren’t user-friendly enough. Yet the right interface is often the decisive point on which the success or failure of an application hinges. Customers or employee can become either frustrated or enthused in using an application. Many of them do what you intended for them to do, but many others can become get hopelessly lost.

Cleverlance has vast experience working with the usability of individual applications. We consider web interfaces, which often seem overly technical and with which you often don’t have “control” of how users use them, to be of the utmost importance.   Jakob Nielsen, one of the founders of the modern usability in IT, states that usability is a necessary condition for survival on the Internet.

If web pages are difficult to use, people will leave, since it’s very likely they’ll find something better. If they don’t find what they’re looking for on the homepage, they’ll leave. If they get lost on a website or in an application, they’ll leave. If the information that the user finds is poor, hard to read, random or poorly structured, they’ll leave without buying something or leaving important information. If the user doesn’t know how to continue in purchase process or can’t find information, he’ll leave. It pays then to entrust the interface to specialists and not to skimp on the usability of your application.

Main benefits

• Reduced costs for technical support.
• Fewer number of user errors.
• Data purity – properly filled in customer registration cards.
• Reduction in training time and costs.
• Higher user loyalty.
• Reduced costs for use of system, which means greater efficiency – e.g. more operations in call center or more customers served at the counter.
• More customers thanks to pleasant user experiences and higher ratio of application acceptance by users.
  

More on usability

Is your application or website usable? There are many definitions, but all concur on the following five points:

• Fast and easy orientation; you always know where you are and where you should go.
• You learn to use it effortlessly, intuitively.
• Efficient use, you get to where you need to go and all operations are “easy”.
• If an error occurs, there’s no fatal consequence and you can continue in your work.
• It’s easy to remember how to use it.

Do your applications or websites have these properties? Usability yields advantages for all users – for potential customers and you. All users will profit from usability since:

• They’ll be satisfied and not frustrated from the use of websites or applications.
• The system will be used as you expected it to be.
• They’ll reach their objectives efficiently and effectively.
• Trust in your company or product will grow.
• They will like using your services.

According to John S. Rhodes, the editor and administrator of the WebWord.com server, research shows that usability offers a better return on investment than almost all other business activities.

Why usability testing is important

Our experience derived from many projects show that 10% of project expenses invested into usability testing result in over twice the quality of the created website or application. It also leads to twice the efficiency of the created intranet.

The Cleverlance solution therefore also features the professional testing of the usability of the proposed user interfaces – website, applications for mobile devices, intranet, etc. The main advantage of this process is to maximise conversions (purchases, registrations) from the website visits, increase staff productivity, and an overall increase in the efficiency and return on funds expended to attain and serve customers.

How we test usability at Cleverlance

The testing of usability is usually conducted on a prototype that simulates an actual web application; the test subjects are assured of the security of used data and their privacy.

The test is conducted in the Usability lab through a moderated meeting in which the moderator has tasks prepared for subjects (these are consulted with the customer). The main objective is to monitor the subject and his work method. During the testing the moderator can pose additional questions to better understand the subjects, their thinking and why they acted in some way. The customer can pose other questions during the study through an on-line chat.

Specific test example

The success of usability testing is conditioned upon the observance of basic rules for user testing of websites and applications. Cleverlance uses a worldwide acknowledged methodology tested on hundreds of thousands of websites and applications.

Effective usability testing has three basic components:

• The first component of successful usability testing is acquiring a representative group of users, such as potential website users, customers who will use the Internet for registration or online purchases (e-shop), or employees of companies with an intranet.
• Another key component of user testing is to have subjects perform specific tasks related to the tested website. Our usability experts come into play here and prepare the tasks to unveil key problems in website usability.
• Monitoring how users perform certain tasks and where they have problems with the user interface (GUI) is a critical phase. During this phase we try to catch all deficiencies in using the website and record them in a report.

The report contains:

• Information on test subjects,
• basic findings from the test,
• tasks and summary of solutions,
• proposals for improvements and steps that need to be taken
• short videos.

During the usability testing, subjects should be left to resolve all problems by themselves. Any assistance or directions to a specific part of the website or application immediately contaminates the user-testing results.
The results may prompt changes in designs and in the prototype to ensure better functionality and higher degree of customer satisfaction.