Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

Web Design & Development • Midterm Project

Usability • Myths

Most companies, web developers and businesses do not employ usability in their websites because of several myths surrounding usability, here are a few and why they should be disregarded:

Usability is expensive - Well, of course, if you are a multi billion dollar company with 1000s of users, then usability might be expensive. If you are a startup company with a small user base, then its not all that expensive to incorporate usability practices in your organization! An important point to remember is that every dollar invested in usability during the product development lifecycle yields 100 dollars!

Usability is a long, tedious, time consuming process - Usability tests and peocesses are not really time consuming. if you have everything in order, then a simple usability test can be conducted and results can be achieved in less than a day!

Usability is common sense - Usability may not be as easy as it sounds, if it were, than everyone would be a usability expert, usability has more to it than just the design. The interaction of people and technology cannot be as easy as it is thought to be.

Usability limits innovation - While its true that usability studies and tests are hard on designers, its not entirely true that usability limits innovation and curbs the creativity of designers. If we look carefully, there are 100s of superby designed websites out there that are equally usable.

Usability is for stupid users - Not entirely true! usability may be partial to novice users, but it definitely does not ignore expert users. Usability is all about striking a harmony between the several different types of users of the website

Usability is a luxury - Many usability experts will disagree! Usability may prove to be a little expensive initially, but if the return on investment is brought into the picture, the whole scenario changes, in almost all cases, usability yields a high ROI