Why does usability matter to us?
In a world where millions of apps and websites are vying for our attention every day, users have to make split-second choices between all the options available to them — and they exercise that right ruthlessly.
Their first straw is often also their last straw.
A poor color choice, a minor accessibility violation, or a slowly-loading form could be one of the only things standing between our client’s product and a double-digit conversion rate.
Why should it matter to you?
Usability does a lot more than make your product look pretty or work well. It does those things too, but it also…
🥇 Distinguishes great products from good ones
Google wasn’t always the world’s top-ranked search engine, but in the late 2000s its minimalist interface and quick response times eventually edged out what was deemed to be its less usable competitor, Yahoo Search.
🥇 Correlates to business success
It’s simple: products that are effective, efficient and satisfactory lead to better reviews and lower churn rates. Apple’s iPhone is a quintessential example of a usability-centered brand that has kept its target market loyal for decades simply through design that prioritizes both beauty and functionality.
🥇 Minimizes support and maintenance costs
While every product requires some level of continued monitoring and refinement, low usability can further exacerbate overhead costs. Older models of the HP printer featured overly complicated menu systems that were near-impossible to navigate and resulted in an influx of customer service inquiries related to setup and troubleshooting.
The five tenets of usability
Not all roads lead to usability. But ours does. Here’s how.
#1 Consistency and visual hierarchy
If you have a product where all the primary buttons come in seven different shades of blue, that’s your first sign that something might be wrong.
Inconsistencies in color, typography, and layout all tend to leave a lasting impression on a user’s subconscious mind. This also affects their perception of your brand as a whole: think Coca-Cola in 1985, when they tried to re-launch the existing Coke drink with a new formula and ended up alienating their entire consumer base.
The easy fix? Start from the basics.
A few of the key questions our team typically finds ourselves asking (and answering) when auditing for consistency are:
- Is there a defined style or brand guide?
- Does the product have a design system? If not, can it benefit from one?
- Has information hierarchy been tested with wireframes?
- When presented with a lineup of similar-looking components, could a user pick out which component belongs to your product?
At reloadux, we follow Brad Frost’s principles of atomic design, meaning that we break down every user interface component, from tables to forms, into their smallest possible individual parts. (If you’re curious, you can read more about how we use atomic design systems in our day-to-day here.)
Being able to craft products at the pixel level is a big part of our long-term commitment as designers to pay attention to every detail. More importantly, it enables us to make deliberate, reusable design decisions.
This approach is precisely what helped us grow the Global Parents community rapidly by 45%, transforming it from a single forum to a multi-functional social networking platform for families worldwide. Our primary challenge in the early stages of design was to lay out a brand-new suite of features in a way that wouldn’t confuse users about all the options at their fingertips.
Making sure that we had gotten our visual hierarchy right, before we even started thinking about the content itself, was a major factor in ultimately getting the final product shipped quickly, efficiently, and successfully to its audience of tens of thousands of users.
#2 Responsive and accessible design
Screens haven’t been one-size-fits-all for decades now.
Today, the range of possible devices that a user could be viewing your website or app on is so diverse that widespread success is guaranteed only if you’ve designed for multiple breakpoints and dimensions.
At this point, we consider:
- Is the design responsive to multiple screen sizes?
- Can the design be viewed on different devices and operating systems? This applies particularly to cross-platform products.
- Do cursor-optimized elements have a touch-optimized counterpart? For example, are any hover states on desktop replaced with a suitable equivalent on mobile?
- Is the design compliant with WCAG 2.2? Has it been tested with screen readers and other accessibility tech?
- Does the design meet standards for loading time?
Designing for accessibility doesn’t just expand the market for your product — it also increases overall usability.
For example, providing alt text on images helps both vision-impaired users as well as any fully-abled users who might be browsing under slow network conditions.
The reality is that accessibility is still an afterthought for many designers. But in recent years, things have been changing for the better. We aim to be a part of that positive shift.
#3 Clear and streamlined user flows
User flows are one of the first deliverables we work on after discovery. They’re essential to identifying what obstacles might be lying in the user’s way.
At this stage, we question:
- Are tasks and navigation simple? The fewer steps required to finish a task, the better.
- Are CTAs (Calls to Action) clear and well-designed?
- Is the onboarding process addressing user needs? Users should be given all the information they need to get started without the risk of cognitive overload.
- Are there appropriate error handling and feedback mechanisms in place? Error messages must be specific and actionable, and guide the user toward their intended destination.
Our goal is always to enable the ‘happy path’ for as many users as possible.
#4 Performance and loading speed
Performance is an umbrella term we use to refer to the speed at which a website or application loads and responds to user input.
Considering that users are more likely to abandon an experience that takes too long to load, we maintain that it isn’t just the developer’s responsibility to ensure peak performance.
As designers, we do our part by checking the following:
- Are pages loading within <1 second? Entry points like landing pages should be optimized for performance in particular.
- Do users have to wait for long periods of time without explanation? If the product involves any heavy-duty operations that necessitate a delay, make sure the user knows what’s going on.
- Is the product being optimized for performance during development? Designers should work with developers to carry out performance testing and implement latency reduction or caching accordingly.
We know that slowly-loading content is one of the worst frustrations a user can experience, and we work to make sure it happens as infrequently as possible.
Continuous monitoring and performance testing, even after launch, helps identify bottlenecks, performance issues, or areas of improvement.
#5 Feedback and user engagement
Finally, user ‘delight’ or satisfaction is an essential but often overlooked aspect of usability.
It’s one thing to design a system that helps user meet their goals. It’s another entirely to do it in a way that involves users, engages them, and fulfills their emotional needs by turning a routine activity into a truly memorable experience.
To achieve this, we ask:
- Are we integrating gamification and interactive elements? Progress bars, badges, and rewards are all great ways to encourage user engagement.
- Does the product incorporate user feedback mechanisms? Using surveys, ratings, and reviews can motivate users to provide feedback, insights, and suggestions that can further inform our designs.
- Is an effort being made to educate the user about the product’s capabilities? Quizzes and interactive tutorials provide information in a user-friendly way. Tooltips or contextual help can also assist users in discovering the product’s features.
We’ve always maintained that giving your users the space to be candid is essentially setting yourself up for success. In fact, it’s often through user reports, ratings, or reviews that you find out about usability issues in the first place.
Even if your product doesn’t quite hit all the usability marks just yet, recognizing what’s wrong and being open to improvements — especially those suggested by your own users — are all the hallmarks of a winning attitude.
Dealing with poor usability
The truth is that few digital products actually meet every single one of these standards. As the adage goes, software is inherently complex, meaning that ‘perfect usability’ for all is technically unattainable, and subject to different contexts and tradeoffs.
However, products can and should strive to be optimally usable in accordance with the needs and goals of their target audience.
So how can you tell if your product meets that ideal?
The easy way out -- UX audits
To help turn the tide toward usability, reloadux routinely conducts UX audits for founders and businesses looking to revamp their app or website. Not only do we check for all of the above-mentioned best usability practices, we also do it via cold hard facts — our conclusions are drawn from tried-and-true metrics like task time, misclick rates, and subjective satisfaction.
We’ve written at length about our end-to-end UX audit process before, where we also share our success stories in revamping our clients’ products from task completion rates of below 50% to over 90% across all user flows.
At the end of the day, no matter how revolutionary the idea behind it is, people want products they can use — and enjoy using. If you feel like you’re not quite there yet, feel free to send us a message. Our team of UX experts will be happy to help.
Ahmad Ullah
Principle UX Designer
