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Sunday 24 July 2016

Usability - all you will ever need to know

Usability, communicability, applicability. These are, simply put, the main pillars that support the whole concept of human-computer interaction. Usability is concerned with user satisfaction of the system of which he is a user and how efficient said system is. Communicability is the way the system interface manages to get information across to the user. In other words, a system with good communicability is a system whose icons, menus, dialogue boxes and any form of communicative means are arranged in such a way that it doesn't take much time for the user to understand the intended purpose the system wants to convey. Any message on screen should be clear, concise and right to the point, with no useless jibba jabba involved. Applicability deals with the usefulness of the system. A system with a high level of applicability is multipurpose and capable of being used in contexts other than the intended one it was orginally designed for. Ideally, an interface is said to have high applicability value if it can potentially increase the user's skill to perform a certain task he's been assigned to.

Usability may seem by far the most important of the three core concepts. Actually, usability is the most transparent requirement for good human-computer interaction from the user's point of view. Moreover,
a system that has an expected degree of usability also more often than not addresses the other two requests for optimal HCI interaction in equally desired levels.

Usability can also be understood as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments, where effectiveness is the accuracy to completely achieve a desired goal in a given context, while efficiency is the resources to goal achieved ratio. Satisfaction addresses the question of comfort and acceptability of a work system by the users and people affected by its use.

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