Here at \'The Technology Studio\' we believe that usability is absolutely key to technology solutions that drive business results. We are a great admirer of Steve Krug\'s work and have used his \'Don\'t Make me Think\' book as an inspiration for a presentation on usability and its importance that we have shared with some of our clients. I hope you find it useful.
2. We believe usability is key... Our core principle of usability ... DON’T make me THINK 1 1. “Don’t Make Me Think” is the title of a book by Steve Krug on Web Usability which we would strongly recommend
3. The user’s point of view ... 1. Consumers are lazy and getting lazier (your employees ARE consumers!) 2. Users are usually under time pressure 3. “Make what I want available when I want it, where I want it in the form I want it” 4. People do NOT read web pages, they scan them
4. The established best practice ... 5. Make YOUR site as intuitive and effective as Google or Amazon 6. Omit needless words 7. Use searches as long as the results are relevant and well presented 8. Use conventions – make the obvious clickable
5. Guiding the user to what they want ... 9. Make new, important or valuable things REALLY obvious 10. Use what youknow about the user to make THEIR lives easier 11. Use your home page to spell out the bigpicture 13. If users don’t know what’s there, and can’t find it immediately, they will STOPlooking 12. Create highly visual hierarchies and intuitive navigation
6. Testing to get it right ... 15. If you want a great site you HAVE to usertest 16. Users DON’T make optimal choices, they make satisfactory ones 17. 3 to 4 reasonably patient human beings, carefully observed will find c. 80% of usability issues 18. User testing can be simple observation or as scientific as eyetracking
I would start with:Attention: “Would it surprise you if I told you that the average user accesses less than 10% of the data and information available to them in most data rich systems? What proportion off all the data and information available to your average sales person accesses? [collect views] and of the data accessed how effectively do you think it is interpreted? [collect views]”Benefit: “If this is true, and if through usability improvements we could raise this to just [double their answer unless it is ridiculous], it would double the value you would get from the data you buy. If at the same time if we could make the data easier to comprehend, interpret and use for driving business the ROI could be a multiple greater still.”Credibility: “To drive this you really need a deep understanding of the data, a deep understanding of how this can and can’t be analysed, a deep understanding of the healthcare and pharmaceutical environment, a deep understand of usability and a deep capability in designing and delivering systems. Between NHIS and The Technology Studio, we are confident that can demonstrate deep expertise in all these areas.”Destination: “By the end of this part of the presentation I aim to have:Convinced you of the value of usabilityDemonstrated the thought process we go through when designing highly usable interfacesExplained specifically where we believe the biggest usability opportunities are for this project”