Quotes About Usability

la paradoja de la tecnología: por lo general, una mayor capacidad funcional se ha de pagar con una mayor complejidad.

The next time you can't immediately figure out the shower control in a hotel room or have trouble using an unfamiliar television set or kitchen appliance, remember that the problem is in the design. Ask yourself where the problem lies.

Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology. When done well, the results are brilliant, pleasurable products. When done badly, the products are unusable, leading to great frustration and irritation. Or they might be usable, but force us to behave the way the product wishes rather than as we wish.

the proper natural mapping requires no diagrams, no labels, and no instructions.

Los errores deben ser fáciles de detectar, deben tener unas consecuencias mínimas y, de ser posible, sus efectos deben ser reversibles.

If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed. And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed.

Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding. Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them? Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?

Why do people err? Because the designs focus upon the requirements of the system and the machines, and not upon the requirements of people.

attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively. How does that make something easier to use? Simple, by making it easier for people to find solutions to the problems they encounter.

Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of the appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use. HCD is a procedure for addressing these requirements, but with an emphasis on two things: solving the right problem, and doing so in a way that meets human needs and capabilities.

Affordances, signifiers, mappings, and constraints can simplify our encounters with everyday objects. Failure to properly deploy these cues leads to problems.

when a device as simple as a door has to have a sign telling you whether to pull, push, or slide, then it is a failure, poorly designed.

A usable design starts with careful observations of how the tasks being supported are actually performed, followed by a design process that results in a good fit to the actual ways the tasks get performed. The technical name for this method is task analysis. The name for the entire process is human-centered design (HCD), discussed

Engineers and designers who believe they do not need to watch the people who use their products are a major source of the many poor designs that confront us.

we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.

The major areas of design relevant to this book are industrial design, interaction design, and experience design. None of the fields is well defined, but the focus of the efforts does vary, with industrial designers emphasizing form and material, interactive designers emphasizing understandability and usability, and experience designers emphasizing the emotional impact.

Whenever you see hand-lettered signs pasted on doors, switches, or products, trying to explain how to work them, what to do and what not to do, you are also looking at poor design.

La stessa tecnologia che semplifica la vita offrendo più funzioni in ciascun apparecchio la complica anche rendendo il dispositivo più difficile da imparare e da usare. Questo è il paradosso della tecnologia.

We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.

As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.

When a device as simple as a door has to come with an instruction manual—even a one-word manual—then it is a failure, poorly designed.

To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.

Every reader of your program should understand what your functions compute without having to read the function itself. A multi-function program should also come with a purpose statement. Indeed, good programmers write two purpose statements: one for the reader who may have to modify the code and another one for the person who wishes to use the program but not read it.