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Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Thoughts towards universally applicable usability guidelines

Inspired by spending a few minutes trying to work out how to open a ringbinder:

Write out and/or diagram simple instructions for your product.
  1. If the instructions take more than three steps, your product isn't usable; redesign it.
  2. If the instructions don't actually match your product, quit smoking the good stuff on company time and write/diagram them again.
  3. If users need both the written instructions AND the diagrams, then the product is more-or-less usable, but not user-friendly.
  4. If users need the written instructions OR the diagrams but not both, then the product is somewhat user-friendly, but not sufficiently so as to justify entitling the instructions with "For easy operation".
  5. If users don't need any instructions, THEN the product is user-friendly.
Other thoughts?
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