Useful Terms and Ideas

Question 1

Appropriation occurs after adoption, in the sense we will use it in this course, it’s when users find alternative ways of using a product – ways not intended by the designer.

Question 2

About the difference between useful, usable and used and why that matters

Question 3

About ease of use and why it matters and why it’s not the end of the design process

Question 4

About usability and the five factors that make a product usable

Question 5

About user experience and how it builds on usability and the 7 components of a great user experience

Question 6

About the factors of success for new product development and how you can influence them as a designer

Question 7

About adoption and some basic considerations for having your designs adopted

Question 8

About both forms of appropriation, when to be cautious about appropriation and when to embrace it

Question 9

About the dynamics of use and why this cycle matters to product development and design teams

Question 10

How to determine why a product launch failed so that you can avoid making the same mistakes

Question 11

Useful

Answer 11

A product which is useful is one that allows a user to accomplish a task or objective.

Question 12

Usable

Answer 12

Usable refers to the usability of a given product. It is more than “useful” it examines the way that the product will be used and whether it enables the user to do so in a pleasurable, simple (or as simple as possible) and effective manner.

Usability is about human behavior. It recognizes that humans are lazy, get emotional, are not interested in putting a lot of effort into, say, getting a credit card and generally prefer things that are easy to do vs. those that are hard to do.”

Poor usability is often a minor inconvenience (you may mutter about how stupid that door is but you’ll probably do very little to change the door – it’s too much effort for too little reward) rather than a deal breaker.

Question 13

Used

Answer 13

A product may be both useful and usable and still fail to be used. The ultimate aim of a design is not to be useful or usable but for users to use that design. Without users a product is a failure and it doesn’t matter how great the design was – it’s still a failure.

A product must be used if it is to be considered a success. You can deliver a useful and usable product and it’s still possible that users won’t want to use it.

Question 14

Which of the following best explains useful, usable and used?

a. If a product is useful and usable, it will definitely be used.
b. A useful product is the same as a product that will be used.
c. If a product is useful and usable, it might still not be used.

Answer 14

c. If a product is useful and usable, it might still not be used.

Question 15

Which product was considered to be more usable than its competitors and can attribute its success to that?

a. The iPod
b. The C5
c. The Segway

Answer 15

a. The iPod

Question 16

How to Design for Ease of Use

Question 17

How do you Reach These Project Specific Metrics?

Answer 17

We reach project specific metrics for ease of use by conducting user research. We need to know what the user’s objectives are and what they think is reasonable to reach those objectives to define ease of use metrics.

Question 18

you might want to think about different types of goals for your product and interact, observe, etc. users to see what their goals are in those spheres:

Life goals – what does the user aspire to in their life? How might your product get them to that goal? What would motivate a user to choose your product over a competing product that achieves this objective?

Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?

Behavioral goals – when users undertake achieving the goal without using your product, how do they do it? How can your product mimic that process so that the product is familiar to them? (E.g. it mimics their mental models).

Question 19

Life goals – what does the user aspire to in their life? How might your product get them to that goal? What would motivate a user to choose your product over a competing product that achieves this objective?

Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?

Behavioral goals – when users undertake achieving the goal without using your product, how do they do it? How can your product mimic that process so that the product is familiar to them? (E.g. it mimics their mental models).

Question 20

Life goals – what does the user aspire to in their life? How might your product get them to that goal? What would motivate a user to choose your product over a competing product that achieves this objective?

Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?

Behavioral goals – when users undertake achieving the goal without using your product, how do they do it? How can your product mimic that process so that the product is familiar to them? (E.g. it mimics their mental models).

Question 21

Mental models are the models we all have of things we do all the time. We know that we push buttons, for example, and that’s why so many computer applications have buttons that look like “real life” buttons; they fit the mental model.

Question 22

Which kind of objective might you want to explore with a user in context with ease of use?

Answer 22

Life goal

Question 23

Usability and user experience (UX) are not the same thing: the usability of a product is a crucial part that shapes its UX, and hence falls under the umbrella of UX.

Question 24

if your product is not usable, its UX will be bad, and users will leave you for your competitors.

Question 25

Usability is the outcome of a user-centered design process. That is a process which examines how and why a user will adopt a product and seeks to evaluate that use. That process is an iterative one and seeks to continuously improve following each evaluation cycle.

Question 26

Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world of computer-human interaction. It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, no matter how mundane the software is. You may think that you're stuck in a boring, drab IT department making mind-numbing inventory software that only five lonely people will ever use. But you have daily opportunities to show respect for humanity even with the most mundane software.”

Question 27

offered five criteria that a product must meet to be usable: Effectiveness Efficiency Engagingness Error Tolerance Ease of Learning

Question 28

Effectiveness

Answer 28

Effectiveness is about whether users can complete their goals with a high degree of accuracy. Much of the effectiveness of a product comes from the support provided to users when they work with the product; for example, fixing a credit card field so that it only accepts a valid credit card number entry can reduce data entry errors and help users perform their tasks correctly. There are many different ways to provide support—the key is to be as informative as possible in a meaningful way to the user.

Question 29

Utility + Usability = Usefulness

Question 30

usability is concerned with making functions easy and pleasant to use, utility is about providing functions that users need in the first place.

Question 31

Efficiency

Answer 31

Effectiveness and efficiency have come to be blurred in the mind. They are, however, quite different from a usability perspective. Efficiency is all about speed. How fast can the user get the job done?

Question 32

Engagement

Answer 32

Engagement refers to the level of engagement a system offers. Indeed, engagement has become something of a buzzword, but if you cut through the fluff, you’ll find that engagement occurs when the user finds the product pleasant and gratifying to use. Aesthetics matter here, and it’s why many companies invest a small fortune in graphic design elements—but they’re not the only factors involved in how engaging a design is. Engagement is not only about looking nice; it’s also about looking right. Proper layouts, readable typography and ease of navigation all come together to deliver the right interaction for the user and make it engaging. Looking nice isn’t everything, as Wikipedia (famous for its ultra-basic design) proves.

Question 33

Error Tolerance

Answer 33

It seems unlikely that—for any degree of complexity—you can completely eliminate errors in products; in particular, digital products may be error-prone because of the ecosystem in which they dwell – an ecosystem which is beyond the designer’s control. However, the next best thing is to minimize errors from occurring and to ensure that a user can easily recover from an error and get back to what he or she was doing. This is error tolerance. Promoting error tolerance, according to Whitney Quesenbery, requires: Restricting opportunities to do the wrong thing. Make links/buttons clear and distinct, keep language clear and simple, don’t use jargon unless absolutely necessary and keep dependencies in forms or actions together. Limit options to correct choices if you can and give examples and support when asking people to provide data. Offering the opportunity to “redo”. Give users a way to reset what they’ve just done and go back and start again. Assume everyone is going to do things you don’t expect them to do. Then, either facilitate that or offer advice/support to get back on the right path.

Question 34

Ease of Learning

Answer 34

If you want a product to be used regularly, then you want the users to be able to learn the product easily so that when they use it again, it comes as second nature.

Question 35

When you’re designing for usability, it’s important to think about utility, too. While usability is concerned with making functions easy and pleasant to use, utility is about providing functions that users need in the first place.

Question 36

How could you restrict the options for a user to make mistakes?

Answer 36

Ensure only correct actions are visible when a user needs to make a decision

Question 37

There are 7 factors that describe user experience, according to Peter Morville a pioneer in the UX field

Answer 37

Useful Usable Findable Credible Desirable Accessible Valuable

Question 38

Useful

Answer 38

If a product isn’t useful to someone why would you want to bring it to market? If it has no purpose, it is unlikely to be able to compete for attention alongside a market full of purposeful and useful products. It’s worth noting that “useful” is in the eye of the beholder and things can be deemed “useful” if they deliver non-practical benefits such as fun or aesthetic appeal. Thus a computer game or sculpture may be deemed useful even if they don’t enable a user to accomplish a goal that others find meaningful.

Question 39

Usable

Answer 39

Usability is concerned with enabling users to effectively and efficiently achieve their end objective with a product.

Question 40

Findable

Answer 40

Findable refers to the idea that the product must be easy to find and in the instance of digital and information products; the content within them must be easy to find too. If you cannot find a product, you’re not going to buy it and that is true for all potential users of that product. If you picked up a newspaper and all the stories within it were allocated page space at random, rather than being organized into sections such as Sport, Entertainment, Business, etc. you would probably find reading the newspaper a very frustrating experience. Findability is vital to the user experience of many products.

Question 41

Credible

Answer 41

Credibility relates to the ability of the user to trust in the product that you’ve provided. Not just that it does the job that it is supposed to do but that it will last for a reasonable amount of time and that the information provided with it is accurate and fit-for-purpose. It is nearly impossible to deliver a user experience if the user thinks the product creator is a lying, clown with bad intentions – they’ll take their business elsewhere instead.

Question 42

Desirable

Answer 42

Skoda and Porsche both make cars. They are to some extent both useful, usable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable but Porsche is much more desirable than Skoda. This is not to say that Skoda is undesirable they have sold a lot of cars under that brand but given a choice of a new Porsche or Skoda for free – most people will opt for the Porsche. Desirability is conveyed in design through branding, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design. The more desirable a product is – the more likely it is that the user who has it will brag about it and create desire in other users.

Question 43

Accessible

Answer 43

adly, accessibility often gets lost in the mix when creating user experiences. Accessibility is about providing an experience which can be accessed by users of a full range of abilities – this includes those who are disabled in some respect such as hearing loss, impaired vision, motion impaired or learning impaired. Design for accessibility is often seen by companies as a waste of money because the impression is that people with disabilities make up a small segment of the population. In fact, in the United States at least 19% of people have a disability according to the census data and it is likely that this number is higher in less developed nations. That’s 1 in 5 people in the audience for your product that may not be able to use it if it’s not accessible or 20% of your total market! It’s also worth remembering that when you design for accessibility, you will often find that you create products that are easier for everyone to use not just those with disabilities. Don’t neglect accessibility in the user experience. Finally, accessible design is now a legal obligation in many jurisdictions including the EU and failure to deliver it may result in fines. Sadly, this obligation is not being enforced as often as it should be.

Question 44

Valuable

Answer 44

Finally, the product must deliver value. It must deliver value to the business which creates it and to the user who buys or uses it. Without value it is likely that any initial success of a product will eventually be undermined. Designers should bear in mind that value is one of the key influences on purchasing decisions. A $100 product that solves a $10,000 problem is one that is likely to succeed; a $10,000 product that solves a $100 problem is much less likely to do so.

Question 45

A representative from your company has been caught making false claims about your product in internet forums. Which factor of the user experience have they directly damaged?

Answer 45

Credible

Question 46

If you live in the EU which factor of the user experience is required by law?

Answer 46

Accessible