Usability is a Science
To a large extent we all are “self-taught” technology usability experts because we all use technology everyday and from this context can easily bring a consumer perspective to our product. The following is my take on usability as a practical science and not a complete detailed exposition on usability (for a definition of usability go to http://www.upassoc.org/).
Usability is a Science
The science of usability is the study of all of the factors necessary to present your information, create your application, or paint your cave wall in a way that most clearly communicates what you want to your audience. This applied study requires using at the very least the sciences of communication, psychology, and sociology and to a further extent the cognitive sciences, physiology, geography as well as the other disciplines of art, history, linguistics, rhetoric, and political science.
Communicating information
Aristotle taught that there are three elements to the communicative event: speaker, audience, and the speech or information. The speaker wants to transmit information (pictures or words) to his audience with the audience receiving all of his/her information exactly as intended. Of course it is never as easy as just saying the words or presenting the pictures and having the audience grasp every nuance exactly as you would want as there are always contextual issues to deal with: language, cultural, psychological, among other issues. The same communication problems apply to designing information for a web page, application, book, or cave wall.
Understanding that the audience has a priori knowledge as to how, why, when, and where information should be presented based on sociological, educational, psychological, behavioral factors is important if you want your information to be communicated easily or your product used more. This is where the applied study of these factors, the science of usability, is important in taking your message or product to consumers.
“Soft” Science
Yes, usability is a soft science like psychology or sociology, but even the information we get from the hard sciences changes over time. Studies in biological evolution are quantifiable but when any testing is done it is a slice in time and it is impossible to create conditions for all of the same variables. Yes the target is moving and there are new and changing variables.
The scary part is that they can actually watch the neurons flow in certain parts of the brain when someone is engaged in a product. “The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks’] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.” http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-causes-religious-reaction-i n-brains-of-fans-say-neuroscientists/ [quoted from the show http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011fjbp]
So you could test different layouts of a web page or different product designs to different users and see which has the most effect on neurons flowing in the pleasure areas of the brain. Usability doesn’t dictate every facet so that every product looks the same. It helps to present your content (what you’re a selling) in a way that the user intuitively gets to where they want to go-this is the engaged user part. People like Apple products because generally content is the focus, all of the machinery to get you to where you want to go is hidden as much as possible and subtle and consistent when it needs to be seen. But the layout and design of a product, software, or web site includes artistry.
I think of the science of usability as like the science of cooking. The end result is a product of the correct and best ingredients prepared to meet your guests expectations. The best chef’s creativity takes over beyond the recipe to create something new, but something born from within a context that will be “understood” by the guests. To engage the Japanese eater, you would probably need to do something different than for an American.
