What is “usability” and why does it matter to educational technology studies?
Documentation tool
1. Learnability
Describe in your own words:
Based heavily on Norman's concepts of feedback and discoverability, a well designed learnable system can be interacted with to discover it's use.
Provide a concrete/practical example:
Touchscreens with feedback systems are the ubiquitous example nowadays.
2. Flexibility
Describe in your own words:
Are there multiple ways of achieving your goal?
Provide a concrete/practical example:
My favorite example in my day to day life is in AutoCAD how you can use buttons on the ribbon or the command line to enter your commands.
3. Robustness
Describe in your own words:
Is there a help menu, button, or feedback mechanism when you cannot discover how to move forward?
Provide a concrete/practical example:
Clippy. The annoying paperclip was an example of early design for robustness.
4. Efficiency
Describe in your own words:
Is the ceiling on how well you can use this tool/software sufficiently high to provide an incentive to become good with it.
Provide a concrete/practical example:
Early word processors like notepad provided very little in the way of efficiency-incentive as they were meant to be very basic tools.
5. Memorability
Describe in your own words:
How intuitive is the process of operating the software. Alternatively, how easy is it to commit to memory (frustration is memorable, so oddly some poorly designed systems could score high in being memorable)
Provide a concrete/practical example:
I don't have any personal examples of this at this point.
6. Errors
Describe in your own words:
What is the cost of making mistakes with this process?
Provide a concrete/practical example:
"Mr.Way, did you know that if you use a While(1) loop in this simulator it crashes the whole platform?"- Me, trying to break a new robotics simulator with my students (who clearly paid attention in Computer Science Class)
7. Satisfaction
Describe in your own words:
Do you hold this process or technology in your hands and does it spark joy?
Provide a concrete/practical example:
(this is more a satirical take on if the machines derived satisfaction from the encounter)
“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, “they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.”
“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?”
“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”
A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.“
What?” they said.
“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure.
“All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.” As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Thinking Critically about Usability
Do the principles (and criteria) of “usability” that you’ve been working through and finding examples of (from Issa & Isaias, 2015, 2.4.3) fit into HCI’s ‘present,' as set out in the above diagram? Or do these principles (and criteria) of “usability” fit better in its ‘past’?
Contextual shifts matter in design and I think that is what makes this question really hard to answer. The In The Past aspects of usability are still important when designing experience and are intrinsically a part of the present ones, just in a more complex way.
Note that I say "designing experience" as this is the natural bridge between technology UI's and educational UX applications for this. The concepts used here to define website design are just as applicable to task design in education as they are to designing a theme park (Iwerks, 2019) or experience of designing a new car (Galdwell, 2020).
Of particular note is a quote from Don Norman, the father of Human Centred Design:
“The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.” (Norman, 1988)
Iwerks, L., (2019) The Imagineering Story, Disney, Retrieved from https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/series/the-imagineering-story/6ryoXv1e1rWW
Issa, T., & Isaias, P. (2015). Usability and human computer interaction (HCI)Links to an external site.. In Sustainable Design (pp. 19-35). Springer.
Norman, D. (1988) Design of Everyday Things, (originally published as The Psychology of Everyday Things), Basic Books, ISBN 978-0-465-06710-7
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