Two characteristics of quality are closely related to the experience of end-users:
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Functional suitability: Does the system do what it is supposed to do?
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Usability: Can end-users operate the system correctly?
These two characteristics of quality are crucial to the success of any system. Functional suitability is a must-have: unless your software solves a problem that matters to them, your users won’t care whether it is fast, cheap or reliable. Usability is perhaps the second most important: your users will abandon software that they can’t use, long before concerns of reliability, performance or efficiency matter.
Putting the user first
You don’t need to be an expert in user experience to make a huge difference in your users’ lives.
In this chapter, I will discuss three essential strategies for improving user experience:
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User testing: Conducting regular tests of your software with real users
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Accessibility: Developing inclusive systems, that are usable even by users with physical or cognitive disabilities
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Internationalization: Developing for users who speak different languages or live in different cultures
Who benefits?
It is tempting to ignore user experience. Why should you test on others if you believe all your users are just like you? Why accommodate disabilities or other languages if they only make up a small proportion of your market?
Such thinking is unfair and perhaps immoral. It also poses other risks:
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You miss the opportunity to discover potentially valuable new ideas through user testing
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You may violate disability discrimination law (e.g., the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992)
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You are forfeiting potential revenues
Most importantly, however, improving the user experience will benefit everyone. This benefit is known as the ‘curb cut effect’.
Before the 1970s, ramps and curb cuts such as those in the image above were not common. In the 1960s and 1970s, disability activists fought to introduce laws make these cuts mandatory. The curb cut effect is the observation that even though governments made these cuts for wheelchairs, many others benefit:
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Cyclists
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Parents with prams
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Postal service workers on delivery motorbikes
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Businesses who need to transport goods on trolleys
In the same way, designing a website for your most challenged users can help everyone. For example, ensuring your site has simple, clear and large buttons will help your vision-impaired elderly users. However, it will also help your healthy 25-year-old users holding a small phone on a crowded bus.
Design and user experience
User experience, like all forms of design, involves compromise:
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Clever use of color can increase comprehension for some users but be invisible to those with color perception difficulties.
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Adding more fonts and images might improve visual aesthetics but decrease the performance on slower internet connections.
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Animations can direct attention in ways that help less technologically savvy users. However, they can interfere with tools that assist with visual impairment or they can be distracting to neurodiverse users.
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Using simpler icons could enhance the mobile experience but make your application harder to understand.
There is no perfect design. However, experimentation will help you understand the costs and benefits of your decisions.