Usability

Why Usability is Important
On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to
use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offersand
what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave.
If a website's information is hard to read
or doesn't answer users' key
questions, they leave.
Note a patternhere?
There's no such thing as a
user reading a website
manual or otherwise
spending much time trying
to figure out an interface.
There are plenty of other
websites available; leaving is
the firstline of defense when
users encounter a difficulty.

• For intranets, usability is a matter of employee
productivity. Time users waste being lost on your
intranet or pondering difficult instructions ismoney
you waste by paying them to be at work without
getting work done.
• Current best practices call for spending about 10% of
a design project's budget on usability. On average,
this will more thandouble a website's desired quality
metrics and slightly less than double an intranet's
quality metrics. For software and physical products,
the improvements are typically smaller — but stillsubstantial — when you emphasize usability in the
design process.

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En la web, la usabilidad es una condición necesaria para la supervivencia. Si un
sitio web es difícil de usar, la gente se va. Sila página no expone claramente lo que
una empresa ofrece y lo que pueden hacer los usuarios en el sitio, la gente se va. Si
los usuarios se pierden en un sitio web, se van. Si la información de unsitio web es
difícil de leer o no contesta clave de los usuarios preguntas, se van. Nota un patrón
aquí? No hay tal cosa como un la lectura de un sitio web de usuario manual o de
otro pasar mucho tiempotratando averiguar una interfaz.
Hay un montón de otros sitios web disponibles; partida es la primera línea de
defensa cuando los usuarios se encuentran con una dificultad.
Para intranets, la...