Talk:Usability
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Usability Testing?
Much of this page duplicates the content of the page on usability testing, which has been around for several years. Might some of that page be brought here instead? Also, this page was written with a software-only focus. Further, as a technical writer, I've worked with usability issues in web design (which is arguably at least nominally a software issue) but also printed material such as manuals and checklists (which are not). -- Dennis G. Jerz, 30 Aug 2003
[edit] Definition
Moved here from the article page, where it was not appropriate to be in inline with the text.
[This is too narrow a definition. Usability also has to address fields outside of these two, for example, linguistics and software engineering. The usability engineer has to recommend solutions; if he or she does not understand factors such as the technology or the constraints of the programming language, he or she cannot recommend appropriate solutions -- solutions that can be accomplished. ][The usability experts primary task isn't to recommend solutions but to identify usability flaws by the mentioned methods of usability testing. Finding appropriate and realizable solutions finally has to be a colaboration of the usability expert with the hardware or software engineers. Hardware and software engineers are the experts concerning the inherent constraints of the used technology, usability experts are experts concerning the constraints of human beings (human informational processing abilities for instance) who try to use the hardware or software.] It is important the the usability engineer not have a possible technical solution in mind, this may cause them to ignore issues and concerns which cannot be addressed by the potential solution. It is also important that the usability engineer not be too close organizationally with the developers, since then possible solutions may be discarded as "too much work" or "already considered and rejected".
When I studied computer science back in the 1970s, the term 'user friendly' was already an established concept, and there were most likely already textbook definitions. The general notion was that as computers were becoming relatively cheaper, and labor was becoming generally more expensive, it made sense, for the first time, to cater the computer interface more to the user, rather than requiring the user to cater his or her actions to the computer. For example, it was easy for a computer to convert a phone number from a variety of typed formats to a standard one for internal storage. So it was not 'user friendly' to expect the user to worry about whether or not to use hyphens or parentheses. Likewise, it was not user friendly to reject a date of '8/2/05' (a bad example for the 1970s) and insist on '08/02/2005' when it should be obvious to a programmer how to convert one to another, and when there is no ambiguity, such as when asking a user which bank statement is desired.
Thus, 'user friendly' was used to express that something catered to the user, rather than to the computer. Otherwise, the word 'friendly' would have been sufficient.
Having a discussion of 'user friendly' that says, well, we don't know what it means... does not contribute much. Surely, somebody must have reference material that discusses the historical use of the term and what goals were meant to be accomplished by it. -- wresnick 18:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability
I've recently created a Usability WikiProject. The intent is to make Wikipedia easier and more pleasant to use by encouraging things like accessibility, Cross-browser support, standardized templates, and so on. If anyone's interested, please have a look at it, and see if perhaps you'd like to join. –MT 29 June 2005 03:08 (UTC)
[edit] References
When adding new references, please indicate what content is drawn from that reference if it isn't obvious from concurrent edits. Otherwise the addition could appear to violate WP:SPAM and/or WP:EL. --Ronz 19:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge Usability Requirements
I agree on the merge. The requirements article is only a few, unsourced, linkless sentences written by a single editor. --Ronz 19:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I too concur on merging the 2 documents since Usability is still a niche area where many areas are yet to be explored. As the area matures, the articles can be split. However, till then, I think it is logical to keep them merged. -- Karthi.ShanmugamATyahoo.com
