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Usability |
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Home > Usability |
Usability
Usability
is a measure of how easily a thing (typically a software
application or a piece of hardware) can be used in the manner
intended by the designers. Usability includes considerations such as:
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What do users want to do ?
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What is the general background of
the users ? |
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What is the context in which the
user is working ? |
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What has to be left to the machine
? What to the user ? |
Answers to these can be obtained by
conducting user and task analysis at the start of the project.
Other considerations include:
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Can users easily accomplish their
intended tasks? |
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How much training do users need?
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What documentation or other
supporting materials are available to help the user? |
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Can the user recover from errors?
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Are there provisions for meeting
the special needs of users with disabilities?(Note: Is this item
confusing usability with
accessibility?)
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Answers to these and other questions
are determined through
usability testing.
Usability is now recognized as an
important software quality attribute, earning its place among more
traditional attributes such as performance and robustness. Indeed
various academic programs treating usability as a core concern have
begun to appear; see, e.g., the Human-Computer Interaction Program at
Carnegie Mellon University.
Usability is the software
specialization of the larger topic of
human factors and
ergonomics, although the term is also applied to document design.
This article is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation
License. It uses material from the
Wikipedia.
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