Grand Usability Designs

When watching Grand Designs recently, Kevin McCloud was talking about the usability of a staircase. It’s a sad and/or strange admission, but this caught my attention; Usability should be considered with physical objects, not just websites.

My heating system is an object, it’s inactive, but I interact with it and form a relationship with it. Whether it’s love or hate, it’s a relationship. The more positive a relationship I have, the more likely I am to interact with it without even thinking about it. I’m more likely to go back to it. How do I have a positive relationship with it? If it’s easy for me to use.

I’m pretty sure anyone reading this has had some kind of negative experience when trying to use a physical object. If not, where are you living?

It’s the same with paper. Have you ever opened a letter and not understood what it’s asking you to do? Have you sat puzzling over a form, not sure what the questions are asking, or which bits you should fill in. Have you managed to get confused when trying match up the instructions and the materials provided with flat-packed furniture?

The natural reaction as human beings is to start to question ourselves – is it me? Did I read the instructions properly? What am I doing wrong?

Past projects have seen us working with heating systems, mobile phones, remote controls, child car seats, ballot papers as well as websites. None of us here are technicians, electricians, designers or political experts, but we watch people, study their behavior, and see when they are struggling to understand how to complete the task in hand. We make recommendations on ‘how to make it easy’ based on what we see, and our experience and knowledge.

So whether it’s a website or any physical object, make your users happy and have positive relationships & experiences with your products. How? By making it easy to use!