11 November 2011

Usability vs User Experience


There was a forum in HCI discussion which talked about Usability vs User Experience, and debate ppl had was fantastic. I was too excited to read all those comments, one of which said "Usability methodology is to make the product approachable, interactive and something where users can complete their task without having to learn much and most importantly taking control over the system and User Experience is something which is related to how users are delighted to perform the task and say WOW I am so very happy and go ga ga over the usage of the same". Like the statement, yes people do say that if we follow usability principles, user experience automatically is excellent, but is it true? to an extent yes but there needs to be a out of the box thinking and pushing towards high user experience without compromising on usability is what the need of hour, example Ipad, All touch phones people are so addicted to the same, user experience is the key factor to this......

Problem is many people still think visual appeal is what making humans say WOW, but fail to understand to generate WOW factor there needs an change in process first, then identify what people really want what excites them and work on them rather than just toiling your time in debating what crap design refer this that..... Excellent example is one of my earlier companies intranet ppl were so frustrated that they just stopped using it and spent hours on that and when Company decided to change the look and feel and added big banners and graphics, people just said WOW initially without even using it and felt as a relief, but it was just short lived glory, slowly we stared hating it and everybody were praying to get back the old intranet back. Company then decided not to change their intranet and stuck with OLD UI. I am sure this is a story to all at least Indian companies