Lot has been talked about usability of user interfaces be it a website or a desktop app or even a mobile app.The term 'Usability' is mostly associated with the ease of use of a software and its user interface.However, after undergoing few courses/training on Usability I have felt the need of incorporating it not only in your software but in anything that has a user interface.
'A picture is worth a thousand words' , holds so true here.Anything if represented pictorially is much faster to understand to a human. Few examples that I have incorporated my usability knowledge into, may justify the above statement :
So, the date range of absence from office is looked at, it is : 17th - 31st Oct which is like 14 days. If applied as above text , the chances of it getting approved are less and may require an explanation.
However, applying it as a pictorial representation may avoid confusion leading to lesser chances of rejection/modification of the plan.Here s the pictorial representation of the plan:
The above picture helps to :
Lately when I encountered a difficulty in remembering leave plans of my peers I realized, had it been a pictorial info it would have been quicker and easier to refer to.
Some may be already using it while some may feel, the above example may not be worth spending so much time in doing a minor task such as applying a leave.That s absolutely true, but with the above example I just want to focus on the importance of usability and its application to your day to day tasks.
Also, I spent a total of 7 mins in making the above image (Message me to know how @garimakalra25 ).
Example 2 -> Minutes of Meeting : One of our retrospective meetings involved discussion around the process of parallel tasks of two sub teams(Development and QA) within our team. Discussion involved the tasks that each team would be doing in parallel in all the phases of development cycle. After the meeting minutes of the meeting had to be published across the team. I volunteered for it and here is what I came up with :
I agree, that the above is not a rocket science and is a simple flowchart made using MS Office Smart Art.Many of you might be already using it at places, but the focus here is the pictorial representation of a 5 step process. The process was result of minutes of meeting and many would have used paragraphs/bullets to explain it, failing half of the readers to even go through it.
Example 3-> Use of shapes/pictures in documentation to avoid long paragraphs and allow fast interpretation of the content: Once while preparing a document for one of my projects I was suppose to add a text as : "A fuel tank attribute, A can have 3 status's Green,Red,Yellow based on its current inventory level and boundaries for different status's are as follows :
'A picture is worth a thousand words' , holds so true here.Anything if represented pictorially is much faster to understand to a human. Few examples that I have incorporated my usability knowledge into, may justify the above statement :
Example 1 -> Leave Plan representation : Say I have a vacation plan that looks too big looking at the date range but is actually not that big as it sounds , since there is a work from home, long weekend and few official holidays n between in the plan.
Say the plan is :- Work from home from 17 to 21st Oct 2014
- Leave from 22nd to 31st Oct 2014 where 23rd, 24th are declared official holidays(Diwali)
So, the date range of absence from office is looked at, it is : 17th - 31st Oct which is like 14 days. If applied as above text , the chances of it getting approved are less and may require an explanation.
However, applying it as a pictorial representation may avoid confusion leading to lesser chances of rejection/modification of the plan.Here s the pictorial representation of the plan:
The above picture helps to :
- Express the plan smartly
- Quick and clear access to the leave plan
- Avoid locating the text in the mail and then reading it.
Lately when I encountered a difficulty in remembering leave plans of my peers I realized, had it been a pictorial info it would have been quicker and easier to refer to.
Some may be already using it while some may feel, the above example may not be worth spending so much time in doing a minor task such as applying a leave.That s absolutely true, but with the above example I just want to focus on the importance of usability and its application to your day to day tasks.
Also, I spent a total of 7 mins in making the above image (Message me to know how @garimakalra25 ).
Example 2 -> Minutes of Meeting : One of our retrospective meetings involved discussion around the process of parallel tasks of two sub teams(Development and QA) within our team. Discussion involved the tasks that each team would be doing in parallel in all the phases of development cycle. After the meeting minutes of the meeting had to be published across the team. I volunteered for it and here is what I came up with :
I agree, that the above is not a rocket science and is a simple flowchart made using MS Office Smart Art.Many of you might be already using it at places, but the focus here is the pictorial representation of a 5 step process. The process was result of minutes of meeting and many would have used paragraphs/bullets to explain it, failing half of the readers to even go through it.
Example 3-> Use of shapes/pictures in documentation to avoid long paragraphs and allow fast interpretation of the content: Once while preparing a document for one of my projects I was suppose to add a text as : "A fuel tank attribute, A can have 3 status's Green,Red,Yellow based on its current inventory level and boundaries for different status's are as follows :
Green:
Greater than X
Red: Less than Y
Yellow: X-Y
'A' will be decided based on current inventory level of the tank.So if current inventory level is somewhere between X and Y , then A will be Yellow.
The above paragraph was replaced by a picture as below :
- Studies have shown that humans look first at pictures and then at the text.
- Most of you must have seen the pictorial representation before even reading the text , in all the above cases.
- Another advantage of using pictures is that once you are able to visualize what the text is trying to state, you feel more connected and comfortable with the text too, improving the overall user experience and usability of the content.
Conclusion : Usability can be applied to almost all of your daily tasks, provided the main goal of conveying the actual information that is intent of the task is not defeated.
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