Usability Consulting and Design
Usability is another one of these terms that people all over the place are starting to use to refer to all sorts of things. When I talk about usability, I talk about the simple definition; how easy is it to use a web site or web-based application?
How Do I Approach It?
As with most of my work, all Usability consulting is of course approached from the end-users' perspective. Since it involves people and their reactions, Usability tends to be quite qualitative, but there are some aspects where quantitative data can be gathered and is very useful.
Gathering click-stream information, analysing web metrics, conducting 1-on-1 or 1-on-many usability tests and structured observations are all common methods of measuring and collecting information as part of a Usability consultation.
What Do I Do?
- If You Already Have a Web Site...
...then I can conduct a review of your existing site based on user experiences, usability tests, metric analyses and other means, allowing me to make recommendations on how you can improve the usability of your site or application. - If You Don't Have a Site Yet...
...but would like to ensure that your new site or system is usable, then I can be involved in the design and prototyping stages to ensure that the user is well catered for. This allows me to test small components of the system as prototypes as required and implement industry-standard 'rules-of-thumb' in other places.
Either way, you will find that designing a system to cater for the people using it can lead to everything from improved productivity (for systems like an intranet) to increased sales (for e-commerce sites).
The person on the other end is nearly always the most important person involved in any process, so why not treat them like it?