User-friendliness! A Vital Feature in every Design

Chronicles of Experience

The end users may not be the ones making the decisions or paying the bills, but the users are the ones who are intimately aware of your product or service and all it has to offer.  Their feedback matters, perhaps more than anyone else’s.  This is why user-friendliness is a vital feature in every design.  Soap, cars, software, board games, dummies and anything else you think of has an intended user.  How do we keep that user satisfied?

Simplify:

Remember just because you can, does not mean you should.  Do not build the most impressive and complicated design in the world that brings pride and tears to the eyes of the developers while leaving your users scratching their heads.  The users are all that matter, focus on their needs. 

Logic is key:

Keep the use of your product simple and follow logical procedures when giving instructions for use.  If a user has to sit with an instruction booklet in hand while using your product, you might need to look at the complexity and logical thought behind those steps.  Your average users are unlikely to have engineering degrees.

Scrub away frustrations:

For this tip, we can look at a software or workflow system that users are likely to use for a few hours a day.  If you need to send 50 emails a day and every second one shuts down your whole computer you need a new solution.  This is a bit of a hyperbole, but the point is still valid.  Your system should run smoothly and do anything and everything in its power to make the users’ tasks as simple as possible.  Eliminating frustrating little glitches and redundancies can go a long way to make your design more user-friendly.

A satisfying purchase is one you would make again.  Make sure your users find your product or service so simple and easy to use that they would not hesitate to choose your product again.  User-friendly products just make people’s lives better.