“Universal Usability” in User Interface Engineering
Universal, meaning everyone. Usability, meaning how easy it is to use. Simply put together, everyone should be able to use it. Universal usability refers to designing a thing so that it is useful to every user for greater extend.
The concept has been advocated by Ben Shneiderman, a computer scientist at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also provided a more practical definition of universal usability ”Having more than 90% of all households as successful users of information and communications services at least once a week.”
“Designing for experienced frequent user is difficult enough, but designing for a broad audience of unskilled user is far greater challenge.”
— Ben Schneiderman
The concept of universal usability (“usable by all”) is closely related to the concepts of universal design and design for all. The main goal of Universal usability is to making informational systems easier to use and to provide satisfying user experience for all user populations. This includes, but is not limited to, novice users, older users, younger users, users with perceptual impairments, users with motor impairments, and users with cognitive impairments.
What is Usability?
Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. Designers usually measure a design’s usability throughout the development process from wireframes to the final deliverable to ensure maximum usability.
“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.”
— David McQuillan
Accessibility and Usability
Web accessibility and usability are closely related, but the two terms are quite different. Although they’re commonly used interchangeably, it’s important to understand the differences between the two terms.
Accessibility focuses on making sure that anyone can use the product this including users who suffer from any cognitive issues or visual impairments, are deaf or have auditory/hearing impairments, or perhaps are simply among the growing group of older persons using the web today, hence removing this unwanted barrier.
Usability is similar to accessibility, usability focuses on making things easy to use for all and how it operates. When we speak about usability, we’re focusing on how easy user interfaces are to navigate and use for the end user.
The major components of usability:
- Learnability. How quickly are first-time users able to understand basic navigation and functions?
- Efficiency. Can users perform tasks relatively quickly?
- Memorability. When users go away for a while and come back, how quickly can they reacquaint themselves with the basic navigation and functions?
- Errors. What errors do users make? How severe are the errors? How easily can users understand and rebound from those errors?
- Satisfaction. How much do users enjoy the interface and completing tasks within it? (Both as they are using the product and how they report satisfaction afterwards.)
The major challenges to universal usability:
Researchers have identified three primary challenges in achieving universal usability: technology diversity, user diversity, and gaps in user knowledge.
1. Technology diversity addresses the need to support a broad range of hardware, software, and network access.
2. User diversity focuses on accommodating users with different skills, knowledge, age, gender, disabilities, disabling conditions, literacy, socioeconomic means, and others.
3. Gaps in user knowledge refer to the need to bridge the gap between what users know and what they need to know.
Addressing these challenges will improve usability for first-time, intermittent, and frequent users, and it will also stimulate innovation and promote quality.
10 usability heuristics to improve a digital experience:
1. Visibility of system status: Keep people informed about what is happening. Let them know what is going on with appropriate feedback between interactions when needed.
2. Match between system and the real world: Use words, phrases, concepts, and real-world conventions so that information is clear, natural, and in a logical order for people. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order because people’s mental models of technology are based on their previous digital experiences and their experiences in the physical world.
3. User control and freedom: People often choose system functions by mistake or want to cancel, close, go back, or undo an action to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue.
4. Consistency and standards: Use the same words, phrases, and terms throughout. Don’t make people guess if you are referring to the same thing using a different term. Be consistent with both your internal and external interfaces. Follow standard conventions, so you don’t have to force people to learn something new. Keep their cognitive load to a minimum.
5. Error prevention: Design your software to prevent people from making mistakes. Warn everyone beforehand and allow them to confirm their intent. When an error occurs, avoid cryptic messages and use plain language to describe the error and provide a next step on how to resolve it.
6. Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the amount of mental work required to accomplish a task by making items, actions, and options visible. People should not have to remember information from one part of an experience or view to another. Guidance should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate by easily scanning.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Provide methods that are flexible and efficient for experts and user-friendly to everyone new to an experience or action.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Help people to maintain focus on the essential aspects of content and visual design or UI by only showing relevant information. Irrelevant content or visual design elements tend to diminish an experience.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Politely and clearly inform people when an error has occurred. Explain what went wrong and how to correct the problem by providing a way to solve the problem right now.
10. Help and documentation: Sometimes people need help, especially as devices and interfaces are more complex or depending on their level of knowledge.
Conclusion:
Universal Usability will be met when affordable, useful, and usable technology accommodates the vast majority of the global population: this entails addressing challenges of technology variety, user diversity, and gaps in user knowledge. Research is moving forward to address new challenges and to reach the full potential of universal usability.
If the universal usability concept is not included in the development process, it is highly unlikely that the resulting interface will be universally usable. The main focus of universal usability, however, remains to enable users to be successful users of information and communication technology, and the goals of supporting user flexibility, user control, system transparency, availability, and accessibility will always be the key considerations in universal usability.
