Usability

Expert evaluation looks at the complete system from many perspectives and reveals potential problems such as inconsistency, support for different ways of working, visibility of information and language use. It also enables elements such as error messages to be thoroughly investigated.

There are many compelling reasons to suggest that usability is even more critical to successful application design than it is for winning websites. Usable applications are easy to sell, easy to learn, more efficient in deployment and usability saves money in development.

There should be no doubt that it is the testing itself that is most important to the success of a project. Although a usability lab is helpful, it is not essential. The lack of one should not deter an organisation from pursuing the user testing option.

Understanding the user is a pre-requisite of high quality interface design. Four useful pointers for understanding users are - remember that users are not a homogenous group, don't rely on 'second-hand' information and think in terms of user goals but remember the bigger picture.

Colour in interfaces can cause more problems than it solves. Interface designers must treat colour with caution for a variety of reasons - most importantly the huge variety of ways in which any given colour can be perceived.