The Importance of Usability

By Galen Collins

In 2000, the United States elected a new president. Some feel that the election might have had a different outcome if the ballots used in Palm Beach County, Florida had been less confusing. This event dramatically emphasizes the importance of usability or the relationship between the user and the tool. A tool is considered usable if the intended user finds it easy to use. In the world of hospitality information technology, usability focuses on human-computer interactions.

Why is usability important? A hard to use program, which ignores human factors, can create a variety of problems including headaches, eyestrain, frustration, poor system utilization, boredom, confusion, anxiety, reduced worker productivity, system failure, and higher costs. A software application that uses poor color combinations, for example, can impair the system’s usability and lead to slower reading and visual fatigue. In contrast, friendly software is adaptive, understandable, predictable, responsive, self-explanatory, forgiving, efficient, and flexible. Its design is not based on intuition but on a careful analysis of the human-computer interface. Unfortunately, in most hospitality technology organizations usability has been approached as if it were nothing more than "common sense." As a result, there are very few highly usable hospitality systems. It is important to remember what Will Rogers so aptly stated: " It’s not the things that we don’t know that gets us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that ain’t so."

How do you achieve a high level of usability? According to Shneiderman (1998), the key principle for maximizing usability is to employ iterative design. This allows early testing of prototypes, revisions based on feedback from users, and incremental refinements suggested by usability engineers. Ideally, usability testing should include actual users on a working system. Alternative methods include user testing on system prototypes and a usability inspection conducted by experts. According to Rubin (1994), the specific goals of usability testing are:

Creating a historical record of usability benchmarks for future releases to either improve or maintain current usability standards.

Minimizing the cost of service and hotline calls.

Increasing sales and the probability of repeat sales because satisfied customers are more likely to stick with future releases of the product and refer it to other potential buyers.

Acquiring a competitive edge since usability has become a market separator for products.

Minimizing the risk of releasing a product with serious usability problems.

How users relate to a system is critical to its success. System effectiveness will improve with advancements in technology and as vendors, designers, and usability engineers learn more about the factors that influence the users’ interaction with the system, such as training, interaction devices, screen layouts, information searches, color selection, software and information architecture, and workstation design. The first consideration has always been what the system will do for the user or organization, but of equal importance is how the system works and how comfortable people are in using it.

Rubin, J. (1994) . Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct

Useful Tests. New York, New York: John Wilet & Sons, Inc.

Shneiderman, B. (1998) . Designing the User Interface. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.