Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
understanding of usability awareness, citing look and feel as the primary element. The
other three companies had a deeper understanding, describing usability as the need to
support the user tasks. An interesting finding was that those companies that showed a
deeper understanding of usability were also the ones doing business on a tender basis.
It is possible that in order to win tenders, companies must ensure that they respond to
the client's needs. It is also possible that during the development process, the client
has much deeper involvement compared to those companies who are selling their
application on an off the shelf basis.
Analysis of users needs showed that the most commonly reported need was intui-
tive use. Two companies remarked that having to do as few clicks as possible was
important for their users, while another phrased this as fast use. Other needs cited
were easy navigation, quality of information and responsiveness. One company ob-
served that their users simply like what they are used to. This is an interesting chal-
lenge when developing web applications because it is possible that users are used to
desktop applications but have less experience with web applications. This is reflected
in the fact that one company said that their biggest challenge was delivering more and
more complex functionality via the web and still trying to maintain a high level of
usability. The challenge is to develop a web application that delivers a high level of
ease of use and learnability so that it becomes irrelevant to users that they achieve
their goal in a slightly different way to before. The researchers also believes that nov-
ice users may benefit greatly from education from the development company on the
advantages the web brings before assuming that the client wants a mirror image of the
desktop application functionality.
Only one company reported that awareness of the user needs and their IT skills was
poor. They acknowledged that this was reflected in the fact that they were still deliv-
ering new functionality with poor usability. Most of the companies felt that awareness
among staff of the client needs grows with the experience of working on a project and
through good requirement specifications.
Analysis of how the interviewees defined usability supports the evidence that con-
fusion still exists as to what is meant by usability. For some usability refers to the UI
and for others it means how productively the system allows users to complete their
task. Two companies defined usability in terms of the UI and the other three defined it
in terms of supporting the user's task. It is encouraging that three companies defined
usability as the extent to which it supported the user tasks. But only one company
mentioned efficiency as an element of usability. This is particularly interesting in
terms of web applications because efficiency has been cited as one of the most impor-
tant aspects of usability for the web. Also, none of the companies remarked on effec-
tiveness or satisfaction as key elements of usability. Most of the companies have
reached an understanding that a system should enable a user to reach his goal but they
lack the awareness of the fact that it should enable them to do so in as productive and
pleasing a manner possible.
Rather than dismissing those who defined usability primarily in terms of look and
feel as having a poor understanding of usability, it is worth looking at the fact that
most of the companies did not mention look and feel at all. Although industry defini-
tions make it clear that usability is much more about the look of a product, [5] cites
the 'degree of visual quality' as a key element of usability for web applications. This
finding supports the observations by [19] who noted that developers are confused
