How User-Friendly is Your Product or Website?

When you are in the early stages of fathering and developing your information product, whether it’s a website, a piece of software, training materials, or printed information, it really makes sense to make sure you have checked your plan against the five E’s of user friendly design.

• Effective – Are people able to complete their work/entertainment oriented goals with your information?
  Take a few  moments to make sure you’ve provided all the information and interactive features (e.g. save buttons on part-completed forms) that are essential to completing particular tasks that people might want to undertake
• Efficient - How quickly can these goals be completed with this product?
  Once you’ve made sure you’ve got all building blocks in place, you need to make sure the system can be used quickly. In the case of computer based information, it should display and process information at an acceptable speed – people hate waiting around for the egg-timer. If you’re offering printed information, a comprehensive table of contents, page numbers and an index all help to make your  information more easy to work with.
• Engaging: How well the interface draws the user into using it and how pleasant and satisfying it is to use?
  It’s important that your system mirrors the way users think about their goals, so that they are working with your system, not against it. For example, if a person made a mistake entering some information, they would expect the system to keep all the correct information and indicate where the mistake occured. If the system took the person back to the start of the buying process when they made a mistake filling in parts of their billing address, for example, this would frustrate the users and make the system unpleasant an annoying to use.
• Error Tolerant: How well the product prevents errors and how it helps the user recover from mistakes that do occur?
  It’s always a good idea to stop mistakes happening before they even occur, or if that’s not possible, at the time the mistake occurs. If there is a problem, it should be handled effectively, and not cause the system to crash, or the person to lose the steps they have done correctly. Good quality error messages, which explain what the problem is and how to fix it, are also a recommended
• Easy to Learn: How easy is it work out how to use the information and are common features shared so they only need to be learned once?
  The systems that are most popular with people are the ones that feel familiar to them. The system behaves in a predictable way, increasing the persons confidence. For example cut, copy and paste works the same across lots of different software programs. The person only needs to learn the principle once and then can apply that knowledge confidently in lots of different ways –  in one or many programs. If your system has features similar to other programs or websites, have a good look how the popular ones are used and try to work that into your design.

So why not apply the five Es to your information products and see how they measure up? If you want some advice on a specific product, why not post up a question?

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