MBUSA Usability Strategy

Introduction
Usability Defined
Methodology

We don't always think of them in this way here at MBUSA, but our customers, business partners, and employees are all users of our legacy and web-based products. And if our users don't understand how to use a given product, they simply will not use it and in turn MBUSA loses.

If parts of our business make life difficult for these users, we are pretty much assured that they will make business difficult for us. So in our business environment, a usability problem is a business problem!

Since a positive user experience is critical to the success of our business, it is vital that we deliver it. The Usability Strategy is a step in ensuring that our customers, business partners, and employees benefit from an optimal user experience, which, in the end, will increase revenue and customer satisfaction for MBUSA, as well as lower costs.

Indeed, Usability is smart business!

Full text of MBUSA Usability Strategy

Usability is a measurable characteristic of a product user interface (UI) that occurs to a greater or lesser degree. Two main dimensions of the product UI are:

• Can novice and casual users easily learn how to use it?
• Can proficient users use it efficiently

Other factors include:

• Can a user recover quickly from errors?
• Is it easy to remember what to do?
• Is it fun to use?
• Is it visually pleasing?
  

Usability engineering provides a methodology for achieving usability in user interface design during product design and development. The methodology is comprised of the usability engineering lifecycle, which integrate into our current organizational software or web development project lifecycle.

Applying Usability Engineering early on in the software or web development project lifecycle can greatly reduce extensive redesign, maintenance, and customer support, which can substantially eat away profits.

Any internal software or web development team aiming to produce usable products needs, at the least, two things:

• Knowledge and application of known user interface design principles and guidelines
• Knowledge and application of structured methods for achieving usability

Adherence to the proposed MBUSA Usability Engineering Lifecycle ( see MBUSA Usability Strategy) will ensure that structured methods for achieving usability are documented and that principles and guidelines are met by internal and external web and software development teams (Mayhew, 1999).