Usable = “used to”? How about progress?
Submitted by Ainars Galvans on Fri, 11/01/2008 - 16:24.
usability testing
...I’m used to manual transmission, however I agree that automatic transmission is somewhat more useful, but I’m simply used to manual one.
"Used to" is the most accepted oracle for usability testing. If the application seems a lot like any Microsoft application, then it’s usable (despite perhaps they hate Microsoft …). Now, in 2007 Microsoft did a bad thing – changed what we get used to during last 15 years.
I don’t know why Microsoft did this, but as I red Jason blog and tried to analyze what exactly they did I realized something. Context has changed during last 15 years: monitors are larger and with better resolution so we could fit there more stuff, people are used to instant feedback (and computers are now fast enough to provide it), data could be copy-pasted between any applications and an average person is more used to software, so an average word user is using more it’s features compared to what they did 10 years ago. I do feel intuitive that new office UI influenced a lot by context changes mentioned above.
Let’s take me for example. I know word could count words and characters for me in the document, which is usable when submitting papers for conferences. In word up to 2000 to do this I should have invoke File->Properties->… that’s not very intuitive, is it? In 2007 number of words are there on the screen as I type. And to learn number of characters I need to go to Review and click icon with characters and numbers. That’s more intuitive, isn’t it?
What was usable yesterday?
I was in Minsk, Belarus this week. Most local people pay in cash for their hotel rooms. They are simply not used to credit cards yet, although hotels and supermarkets accept them. People think cash is more useful.
I don’t know if new office UI is going to be a credit card or an automatic transmission for me. But I’m ready to sacrifice some of my time to learn it. I’m actually happy Microsoft did this - I don’t want my children to learn the old ugly interface only because the father is used to it…
"Used to" is the most accepted oracle for usability testing. If the application seems a lot like any Microsoft application, then it’s usable (despite perhaps they hate Microsoft …). Now, in 2007 Microsoft did a bad thing – changed what we get used to during last 15 years.
I don’t know why Microsoft did this, but as I red Jason blog and tried to analyze what exactly they did I realized something. Context has changed during last 15 years: monitors are larger and with better resolution so we could fit there more stuff, people are used to instant feedback (and computers are now fast enough to provide it), data could be copy-pasted between any applications and an average person is more used to software, so an average word user is using more it’s features compared to what they did 10 years ago. I do feel intuitive that new office UI influenced a lot by context changes mentioned above.
Let’s take me for example. I know word could count words and characters for me in the document, which is usable when submitting papers for conferences. In word up to 2000 to do this I should have invoke File->Properties->… that’s not very intuitive, is it? In 2007 number of words are there on the screen as I type. And to learn number of characters I need to go to Review and click icon with characters and numbers. That’s more intuitive, isn’t it?
What was usable yesterday?
I was in Minsk, Belarus this week. Most local people pay in cash for their hotel rooms. They are simply not used to credit cards yet, although hotels and supermarkets accept them. People think cash is more useful.
I don’t know if new office UI is going to be a credit card or an automatic transmission for me. But I’m ready to sacrifice some of my time to learn it. I’m actually happy Microsoft did this - I don’t want my children to learn the old ugly interface only because the father is used to it…