Luckily I've Got Another Foot

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! This is a portion of the home page of a new CMS application. Perhaps they should have perfected it just a bit more before launching. Looks like content on their own site is not all that "managed" - but hey buy it anyway!

I don't know what else to say......

Utility vs. Usability

The other day someone posed the question – “What is the difference between utility and usability?”

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much difference. But looking closer you can see it.

In general Utility is serviceableness, applicability, appropriateness, advantageous. This suggests that whatever the object is (e.g. software application) there is an advantage to using it.

What Utility doesn’t state – is the ease with which the object can be used.

That’s where Usability comes in. Of the many definitions of Usability that I encountered one seems to sum it up quite nicely - “The ease with which people can employ a particular tool ..in order to achieve a particular goal”.

Good products have both components – it is essential that the tool provide some advantage otherwise why have it. But if it is so difficult to employ that users are discouraged from using it then it’s value is greatly diminished and the advantages are lost.

So the equation not :

UTILITY = USABILITY

But rather

UTILITY + USABILITY = ADVANTAGE

Tabbing and then what!

I got an email from an industry associate asking about something that this site had implemented and what was our opinion. In the process of looking at the issue I came across some other interesting tidbits.

Tabbing through the nav bar I noticed that when the tab hit one of the facet buttons the text contrast all but disappeared. Sure - it is now in contrast to the overall appearance of the other buttons but one would think that bold reinforcement of where you just landed might be a more appropriate action.

I only spent about 3 minutes on this site and found not only the problem above but another not-so-good design item. Once I had landed on the "Baby" button above I thought I would just tab through the other buttons. Well, apparently the designers didn't think I would want to do that so they moved the start of the tab process right up to the top of the page. So instead of continuing on I started over.