Improving the usability of your tools is a sound business strategy when appropriate, and you can differentiate your work from the competition, and enhance your success simply by following good engineering practices. Enhanced usability can reduce development time and costs by ensuring earlier detection of problems. Problems detected later in development or even during transition can cost 10 to 100 times more to resolve than problems detected early on. Much more testing can be done on a tool when it is responsive and users can readily understand how to correctly operate the tool. Making a tool easier for a user to work with will make it easier for you and your team to accomplish your business objectives. One important process to follow in order to develop a successful tool is the regular measurement of user satisfaction; otherwise, you cannot be sure that you are delivering a successful user experience. User satisfaction objectives must take part in driving the development of your tools.

At this point, you are probably wondering what is meant by usability, and how you can enhance it. There are many definitions, but essentially, usability is the efficiency with which a user can perform a required task or business function with a tool. Efficiency can also spin into multiple examples, but the most common efficiency metrics are performance, errors, productivity, and user-subjective preferences and interface characteristics. The chapters in Part VII investigate ways to enhance usability, mainly from a productivity standpoint. Performance is an important aspect of usability engineering, but you can read performance-related chapters in Part VI, “Techniques to Improve Performance.”

A positive user experience is critical to the success of a tool, so it is vital that you deliver it.