At Click Here we have a saying: “Never use technology for technology’s sake.” This simply means that rather than focusing on using new and emerging tech just to make a splash, we key in on problems our clients face and then find the best way to arrive at solutions. Technology, after all, should always serve us and not the other way around. It is important to stay ahead of the curve, but it’s also vital to keep a cool head and think about the implications of any new web tools. When implementing innovative technology for the first time, it’s important to ask a few questions.
1. Will this technology add value to the project? Rather than just being “cool,” will the technology benefit the user in some way? Will it solve a problem?
2. Has the technology been established; is it stable? There’s no point in using a technology that is so cutting edge that it is still full of bugs. Sometimes a new piece of web tech requires some kind of hardware to use, a webcam or a specific type of smart phone. If your target audience doesn’t have this hardware, then the technology is useless.
3. Is the technology convenient? Even if it addresses a problem, users will move on immediately if it gets in the way or takes too long. An animated intro may provide valuable information, but returning visitors are not going to sit through it every time.
These can be difficult axioms to follow for those of us who thrive on digital trends and bleeding-edge advances in web development. It’s always tempting to jump at the chance to implement something original and cool. Recent years have been littered with web properties damaged because the people behind them were too concerned with what they could do and not what they should do.
Recently, Google announced its plans to pull the plug on Google Wave after the web tool failed to live up to its promise. Google’s engineers saw Wave as an opportunity to implement some advanced document collaboration technology and didn’t give nearly the consideration necessary to what users would actually need it for. After a splashy demonstration at Google I/O and weeks of anticipation, Google began sending out invites to select users. The near unanimous consensus was that Wave was cool, but most people couldn’t figure out what it was for. It implemented some fascinating in-browser technology, but it failed to demonstrate how these technologies actually improved its users’ lives.
A great example of such a failure that members of my generation will remember was Nintendo’s Power Glove. Every kid on the block wanted a Power Glove until the day they brought it home from the store and realized that it was useless for actually playing video games. Almost two decades later, Nintendo redeemed themselves by doing motion control the right way with the Wii console. This time, they built the system using the problem/solution model. The problem was finding a way to get gamers physically active while playing and by doing so engage a broader audience. It should also be noted that while the Wii was a revolutionary implementation, it is also far behind competitors Sony and Microsoft when it comes to other technologies such as high-definition output and graphics acceleration. The Wii doesn’t need those things to be successful because it doesn’t address the problem Nintendo set out to solve. The Power Glove was an important first step in developing this motion control technology and while it was a failure, it paved the way for Nintendo’s future success.
A new technology that looks poised to take the Internet by storm is HTML5. It’s been buzzing for months now. Such web giants as Google and Apple have endorsed the updated markup language. However, over 40% of the web surfing world still uses a browser that does not support HTML5 (Source: W3 Counter). While it promises to be the future of the Web, using HTML5 right now just doesn’t make sense for many of our clients. To do so would be using technology for technology’s sake and likely not create an effective solution. As a web development agency, Click Here has a responsibility to our partners to be informed about such new advances, but part of being informed is being able to say “no” to new tech.
To stay in front of emerging tech, Click Here has an internal, cross-discipline group set up specifically to push these boundaries and come up with interesting ways to apply new advances in digital development. Whenever we come across something that piques our interest, we take it upon ourselves to brainstorm how it could be beneficial to our partners. Then we build prototypes and put them through the paces. That way the failures we learn from are never at the expense of a client. We are always on the lookout for the next solution; however, any new technology must always be measured against its ability to solve a problem. After all, technology without purpose may be cool, but it’s very rarely profitable.
The sign of a good interface for a product meant for general public consumption is when the audience it’s designed for is delighted to use it. This includes but goes beyond simple matters of usability, architecture or aesthetics, and lies at the heart of how people are wired to interact with the world around them – and their attitudes and reactions both when they see it and after they interact with it. Failing to design it right can make your website seem cold and lifeless.
Think of the last time you shook someone’s hand. When you looked the other person in the eye, did he look back at you? Did his smile seem sincere, warm and friendly? Could you feel the heat radiate from his palm as his fingers gently squeezed around the ridges of your hand? Did it last a couple shakes – at least three seconds?
What makes such interactions pleasant is that they are welcome, warm and inviting. We find comfort in their predictability. We like it when people react and respond to us appropriately, and we are either bored or shocked when they do not.
Unlike people, computer interfaces (including websites) don’t think on their own. They can’t identify others’ intentions and sensibilities to respond appropriately. They require people – designers and programmers – to identify, predict and enable responses to user behavior so that the system works predictably, intuitively and in a way that inspires the appropriate emotion.
Put another way, designing a handshake is more complicated than designing something that looks like a hand. A fake hand may resemble something you can interact with, but without the intelligence and warmth behind it, it insufficiently reflects the humanity it represents. It doesn’t matter how much you try to make it look human. You can attach a wrist and arm – heck, the rest of the body. You can dress it up and even take it to a dance. But without that intelligence, without that interchange of appropriate responses to your actions, in the end, you’d just be dancing with a dummy.
Use People-Speak, Not Computer-Speak
Computers are part of our lives and, as such, the distinction between our languages has blurred a bit in recent years. They have changed the way we communicate. Did we say that we’re “processing” something before the popularization of the computer? Without context, we don’t know what a person is talking about when they mention a “desktop” or a “mouse.”
Whenever possible, let your interface do your talking for you. Don’t say “Click to submit” if your interface is obviously clickable (the words “Click to” in this case just act as a barrier between sight and cognitive understanding). Just let them know what it’s doing in their terms, not the computer’s.
And for goodness sakes, pay attention to your error messages.
Caption: Very few ordinary users will understand what this means or what they should do about it. Whether the system commits an error or a user does, the system should help the user recover from it. To do that, it must use language the user can understand.
Give Instantaneous Feedback
For a response time to feel instantaneous, it must take place within one-tenth of a second. A one-second response time, while noticeable, still leaves the user feeling like they are in control. Depending on the request, 1-10 seconds may be acceptable, but at 10 seconds, people lose attention and interest.
Once again, there are a number of tricks you can employ if there’s a possibility that something can take more than a split second.
In such cases, utilize the quicker interactions you have at your disposal – rollover states and latency notifications can be the difference in that first 10 seconds.
Caption: Apple’s navigation design helps people understand that what they are doing is having an effect on the system. Even if network conditions or connection speeds cause the next page load to take a few seconds, the user does not need to wonder whether they did something wrong.
If it’s longer than 10 seconds, be empathetic to your audience’s short attention span. Give them something to watch, read or do in the meantime.
Caption: BounceApp’s whimsical loading animation keeps users from thinking about how long it’s taking to process their request. While this exact approach won’t work for every brand, it fits (and helps define) BounceApp’s personality.
Make the Interface Predictable
Variety may be the spice of life, but inconsistency in interface and interaction design can be a major cause of frustration for the intended audience. Not only do people expect all interface elements to work the same on your own website (internal consistency), but also the way they work on other websites (external consistency).
Caption: One of the early usability critiques of the iPad is that the lack of conventions forces users to learn independent interaction rules for each application they use.
There are a number of methods we can use to make sure an interface is predictable (such as through typography, language, shape, color and placement); it doesn’t mean everything on every website always has to look exactly the same.
There are very few hard-and-fast rules of interface design that cannot be bent for a higher purpose. All design involves a series of trade-offs. It’s just important to understand the principles involved and to intentionally choose which trade-offs you’re willing to make.
The key to making your website (or any interface, really) feel like it’s an extension of you is to make it more life-like and less like a computer.
It is not enough to give attention to shapes, colors, sizes and dimensions. Plan the experience so that the entire system is sensitive to how people interact with it over time, providing appropriate responses to user activity so that the user feels like they are shaking the hand of a real person, not just grasping at a dead fish.
Related Links
First Principles of Interaction Design
The Design of Everyday Things
About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
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85 million. That’s the number of iPhones and iPod Touch devices that have been sold to date.
300 thousand. That’s the number of iPad devices sold on the first day of its release.
7 million. That’s the number of iPads some analysts are predicting in its first year of production.
For brands depending on Flash-based websites as their primary messaging tool, these trends will result in close to 100 million touch-screen devices in market that cannot access your information. Gartner reported PC sales in 2009 totaled 306 million devices, so obviously Apple’s influence in the market is not insignificant. Adobe claims that Flash reaches 99% of Internet viewers, but these statistics only measure Internet-enabled desktops. In other words, Flash is installed on 99% of all devices that support Flash. Mac operating systems show 14% of users don’t have Flash installed, and that number grows with every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad sold.
More importantly, the iPad opens the floodgates to an entirely new kind of device. With tablets, just as with the smart phone, Apple was not the first to the fight, but they did bring the biggest stick. Thanks to the success of iPad, consumers will now be inundated with tablet PCs ranging from the Android and Windows platforms to various flavors of Linux. Who is to say how each of these many tablets will handle Flash? Adobe has been promising Flash on Android and Palm’s Web OS smart phones for what seems like an eternity, and yet so far the public has seen only demos. If you depend heavily on a Flash website to communicate important messaging about your products or services, these facts should be concerning.
That being said, it is a mistake to write off Flash entirely. There are still some things it does better than any other web technology. Web designers and developers need to be smarter about how Flash is utilized. Intelligent web production shops will be more judicious with Flash, using it where it makes sense, but always being conscious of how and when Flash content will be viewed. As web browsers begin to adopt support for HTML 5 and CSS 3, which allow for richer native experiences, these technologies should be harnessed where appropriate. Many big sites like YouTube have already begun the transition to HTML 5 for video. While the HTML 5 video embed still does not allow for near the functionality of Flash, YouTube recognizes that it needs to provide the option for those using devices that don’t support the plug-in.
On today’s Web, rich alternate content should always accompany any use of Flash. The days of quickly putting together a “Get Flash” page at the last minute are over. Those who browse on the iPhone and iPad cannot be treated as second-class citizens. The last thing a user wants is to see the infamous Lego brick that indicates a missing Flash plug-in when viewing a site. Also, while there may still be a call for Flash-based sites, the majority of web properties utilizing Flash need to be constructed as a hybrid of front-end web technologies.
There is enough room in the digital space for both Apple and Flash. However, Internet content producers that cannot adjust to a shifting landscape will be left behind. So what steps should web-savvy brands take to ensure users continue to have access to their content? First of all, ask questions such as:
- What technologies are we currently using in our web design?
- Why were those technologies selected in the first place?
- How do these specific web platforms render on Apple touch-screen and other mobile devices?
Knowing what technologies are utilized in your online properties is essential. Secondly, don’t panic. After all, Flash isn’t dead and in many cases it may still be the right platform for your users. If you determine that you have a sizeable audience segment using devices that do not support Flash, begin the process of creating alternate content. In some instances, it may make sense to replace Flash altogether, but usually you will not be able to completely duplicate the valuable, rich user interaction that Flash provides. When this is the case, make sure that the experience is also optimized for those browsing without the Flash plug-in.
As Adobe and Apple battle over the relevance of the Flash platform, the rules will continue to change. More than ever, careful thought and consideration is needed when deciding what technologies to use in the construction of your websites.
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A good website is designed for two types of people: Those who want to consume every morsel of content on each page and those who don’t. Statistically speaking, everyone at your website falls into the second category. Armed with this knowledge, it becomes imperative that sites be designed to draw attention to the correct areas of the page while understanding that, for each audience you have, that area might be different. Here are 3 principles to keep in mind when planning your website.
1. All audiences are not equal.
A general consumer goods retailer has a number of different audiences, just within the customer base. But besides customers, they must also talk to the community, the press, employees, potential employees, investors and often regulators.
These audiences have wildly divergent needs, but they have one thing in common: they expect your website to be designed to sell general consumer goods, regardless of what need brought them to your website.
Secondary audiences for Target.com do not suffer on account of Target’s decision to cater to its primary audiences. Target was ranked 19th largest online retailer in 2008 with 2007 sales of over $1 billion. Investors and prospective employees don’t mind.
This doesn’t mean your design team can neglect other audiences, it just means they are free to focus their energies on solving the primary business problem while providing access to secondary content in areas that do not disappoint those audiences. Everybody wins.
2. The more it is about, the less it will be understood.
For large organizations, there is often a temptation to try to fit a little bit of everything for everybody on one page. This can work to a degree, and there are a number of companies that have found success with this model (e.g., Yahoo!). Others such as Intel have taken a different approach by segregating the audience outright.
Intel immediately segments the audience without sacrificing its core value proposition that communicates its expertise in the category.
All of these companies understand that too much of anything is a bad thing. Because even though they might want to sell a hundred things, virtually no one will want to buy a hundred things. They just need a clear path to their things.
Some companies, such as Amazon, work through personalization, though this doesn’t appear to help it be “about less.” This goes to show you that what’s right for Amazon might not be (and probably isn’t) right for you.
3. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.
This is typified by the monstrous, undead home pages I described back in October. I blame this common flaw on corporate silos. Everyone seems to believe whatever their responsibility entails deserves top billing, or else no one wants to say “no” to their friends and colleagues.
Does that mean you have to choose a SINGLE element to focus on? Not necessarily. But it is always a good practice to utilize conventions in interface design to emphasize high priority tasks.
Apple’s Obsessive-Compulsive Simplicity
I often hear people exclaiming admiration for Apple.com. Their website is “clean” and “simple” and “easy to navigate.” This is true to a point. It’s not true for my typical usage of their website — if I had to get there through the navigation, anyway — but (among other things) Apple has embraced the 3 above principles very well.
- They know (in my typical usage) I am not their primary audience. This frees them up to focus on those who are.
- They stay true thematically to a singular core message.
- They prioritize each page so its purpose is eminently clear – whether you are the audience for that purpose or not.
This is not true of all of Apple’s products – even the popular ones. But here’s one thing to remember: What works for Apple may not (and probably wouldn’t) work for others in the sense they really want it to. There are very few organizations that can, pound for pound, generate such conversation and, in the midst of it, maintain their message discipline. Much of the communication heavy lifting occurs elsewhere (through PR, marketing, organic word of mouth, etc.), and Apple recognizes that.
Apple leaves no room to doubt what they want you to know about. Apple undoubtedly realizes that not everyone who comes to their website is going to buy an iPad. Not everyone who comes to this page will even want an iPad. That’s okay. It’s not who they’re talking to with this message.
Any organization needs to similarly recognize the space in which they work, the environment in which they live, and the sandbox in which they play. Doing this will give them the wherewithal to make the difficult decisions necessary to prioritize correctly and to conform to principles that allow them to communicate the right message to the right people at the right time.
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Contrary to our dearest wishes, people generally don’t come to our websites just to “click around” and see what’s there. They’re on a mission to find or do something – either specifically or vaguely defined. Information scent is that which sets expectations for their ability to find or do it.
It is a brand’s promise to them that they can find or do what the object or labels represent.
The good news is that, for savvy and diligent brands, this is a great opportunity to set high expectations and exceed them – thus, building a strong brand reputation.
The bad news is that, without proper planning, it’s unlikely to happen on its own. Brands, Web designers, and experience planners need to know the principles that will enable them to build strong brands by generating a strong information scent and delivering on the expectations they set.
What is information scent?
(Nerd alert: Instruction of theory follows)
To help interaction designers understand how to make information more findable, back in 1993, some researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center developed a theory called “information foraging,” which suggests that there are important similarities between how animals gather food and how humans collect information online.
The concept of “information scent” came out of this theory, which provided some useful principles to follow when building online experiences.
Abstraction: The stink bomb of information scent
Everything is alike at the appropriate level of abstraction.
For instance, dogs and cats are distinct animals. However, dogs and cats are both “pets.” Dogs, cats, and horses are “domesticated animals.” Dogs, cats, horses, and mice are “animals.” Dogs, cats, horses, mice, and pitchforks are “things you might find on a ranch.”
The more abstract the category, the more difficult it is to predict exactly what the label means. Hence, in (sadly) typical website parlance, “resources” and “tools” may be too abstract to be useful. By themselves, they provide no information scent. “Resources,” as a label, may just as easily be about water, coal, and oil as it is about links, support documents, or helpful people.
As the Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick tell us, “Abstraction is the kiss of death in any situation where you need to stand out.” And in a space that is abundant with information (like the Web), you need to stand out.
Don’t be obsessed with click-counts
Once upon a time, savvy Web designers believed that websites should adhere to something they called the “Three-Click Rule,” which, as the name suggests, stated that every piece of content on a site should be no more than three clicks away.
The problem, however, isn’t the number of clicks. It’s the degree of certainty users have that they can find the information they need – that they can accurately predict what will happen when they click something.
It’s very rarely a good idea to add unnecessary clicks.* But often adding an intermediate step in a given process can actually make things more findable.
Otherwise everyone would just take their site map and turn it into their home page.
* Surprisingly enough, this white paper from Human Factors International suggests adding extra clicks can sometimes better support the goal of the site and fulfill the desires of the users.
Turn your web pages into billboards
“The goal should be for each page to be self-evident, so that just by looking at it the average user will know what it is and how to use it.” – Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think
Following Krug’s advice sometimes means turning three painfully laborious clicks into four quick and mindless ones. Within reasonable constraints, if the information scent is strong enough that users are supremely confident they will find the information they need by clicking on something, as long as the site delivers regularly, they won’t even remember how many clicks it took them to get there.
They get frustrated only when they struggle – either deciding what or where to click, or finding out that what they clicked didn’t give them what they expected.
You could provide instructions, but while in foraging mode, people don’t want to stick around and read instructions, so your interface must convey what you would otherwise use words to communicate.
People want to get to the meat of what brought them to your site in the first place. So they won’t read at first. They’ll scan. They’ll scan by looking for cues that indicate to them where they must go (or what they must read to find out).
Krug wrote of a framework that takes advantage of the typical scanning behavior of users: If people simply scan pages like they scan billboards (until they find what they came for), when necessary and possible, treat the pages like billboards.
Besides creating clear, consistent labels, here are Krug’s guidelines for doing just that:
1. Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page
Caption: As “ugly” as his site design is, Jakob Nielsen’s articles at useit.com are ridiculously easy to scan and read because he makes use of good visual hierarchy.
2. Take advantage of conventions
Caption: Many of the video interface elements we see and recognize everywhere on the Web today are conventions because YouTube became popular. Many of them were recognizable because they were recycled from video players that were manufactured for decades prior to YouTube’s manifestation.
3. Break pages up into clearly defined areas
Caption: USA Today’s website has a lot going on — even on content pages like this one — but the various areas are clearly defined for what they are. Navigation is navigation, headlines are headlines, body text is body text and so forth. Separation between areas aids in navigation and consumption.
4. Make it obvious what’s clickable
Caption: Buttons can come in all shapes and sizes. You can perform a few tests with others to determine if a button appears clickable. But if you do nothing else, look a few inches in front of any given design element (such as a button). If you can still tell that the object is clickable, then it probably will appear clickable to others.
5. Minimize noise
Caption: In spite of providing access to thousands of programs, Hulu.com does an outstanding job of keeping things simple on their homepage.
Live it, love it, give it a pleasant aroma
The main goal of following these principles is to ensure people who come to a site looking for information can find it.
Abstract labels or design features can get in the way of this goal. They are said to have a weak information scent.
Clear labels with good visual hierarchy, familiar or recognizable design elements that aren’t too cluttered typically provide a strong information scent.
It isn’t always possible, given the constraints of any particular circumstance, to achieve 100% clarity in appearance or labels.
However, knowing the principles of information scent and their potential benefit, with proper planning and testing, can give you a greater degree of certainty that your online presence will successfully support your brand promise.
Remember to plan for this important aspect of communication.
Related
Top 10 UX Myths (Hat tip to David Armano)
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The mobile phone, or third screen as they call it, continues to break boundaries in the content people are ingesting. Of course, the advent of the iPhone layed the ground for a turning point in the industry to treat your mobile device as more than a pure utility machine and into a sort of lifestyle device.
This turning point has opened the doors to a much more “mobile involved” customer, increasing incidence of nearly every phone behavior – with the notable exception of talking – but a particularly large increase in the use of mobile video. At 28%, iPhone users are 3.5 times more likely to use mobile video and TV than non-iPhone users according to GfK study.
There are three factors coming from the market that drive this adoption:
Better phones
The iPhone created an entire new category of phone – one that jargon is beginning to call smartphone plus. The screens are bigger and better, allowing for a vast improvement in video quality, and they are designed with an ease of use in mind that transforms the way we think about our phones.
Better networks
Most major carriers have implemented 3G across their network, which has sent download and upload speeds skyrocketing at near broadband speeds. The normal-speed internet surfing from your mobile has unlocked a lot of the potential for the phones to truly become the “third screen,” making video content simply a click away.
Better content
Here the iPhone had a triple role: 1. Allowing users to view and download the content they could download to their computers, be it podcasts, episodes or full movies, on their phones. Often in the Kress household, this means scrambling to download movies before you’re stuck on a plane for a number of hours. 2. Pulling in YouTube content from the start in an app that allows the iPhone user to watch any video on the site. All of those halarious clips that we talk about with friends became immediately available from our mobile phones. 3. The iPhone helped make another cultural shift when they opened the iPhone app store to third-party developers. This created a marketplace for people to customize their phone experience, with video being one of the obvious first choices. Joost was one of the first in the game, bringing its streaming content directly the iPhone in an app.
The mobile video craze isn’t limited to viewing content either. As phone cameras continue to improve and the software behind them meets customer demand, we are seeing more and more videos taken with mobile phones and uploaded on the spot to the video sharing site of your choice. We expect that consumer generated content, not typical video content, will begin much of the growth of mobile video.
The service Qik allows users to stream video content from directly from their phones to its site, sharing every step and experience immediately with family and friends. In the screenshot below, a Googler is streaming video from the Google I/O developer conference.
We expect to see much more from mobile video in the coming years, especially as the marketplace continues to adopt the large, touchscreen “smartphone plus” phones. Keep on a lookout for opportunities for you brands to get involved on the ground level of this growing space.
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The best way to make sure a Web design and development project goes smoothly is to ensure everyone is working toward the same goals. The only way to ensure they’re working toward the same goals is to, early in the project, express the goals in clear, concrete terms and get agreement on them. An effective way to accomplish this is through the creation of use cases.
What is a use case?
Historically, software developers created use cases to define how individuals were expected to interact with a system. They expressed an interaction between users and the software, but from the perspective of the users rather than the system, the programmers, or the programming language itself.
A single use case represented a single task or goal – usually from the perspective of a single user role (called “actors” in geek-speak). However, a single use case could contain several scenarios, which represent variations that could occur in how the system behaves, depending on a specific action or condition of the actor.
An example
For instance, let’s take a look at a simple use case for a word processing application. Say we want to define the printing process. The use case can be expressed in the form of a diagram or in plain text, but either way, it identifies key operations and attributes of the system:
- Who or what is using the operation? (In use cases, the actor isn’t always a person)
- What is the actor’s goal?
- What must the actor do to initiate the process we’re defining?
- What does the system provide in return…
- …when everything is done and set up properly?
…when everything is not done and set up properly?
Consider the implications of the failure to go through this exercise. It would be very easy to overlook the need for the system to identify the conditions necessary for the successful completion of this task, and, if those conditions aren’t met, to provide adequate feedback that lets the user know:
- That an error has occurred,
- What the error was, and
- What steps the user must take to correct it
Ideally, the system would help in this recovery process (e.g., providing a button or wizard to install a printer), but in some cases, it must suffice to tell the user what is wrong in clear language, such as “Your printer is out of paper.”
Don’t laugh. It beats the pants off of some strange error messages we still get from time to time that tell us nothing at all.
Use cases for the Web
Over time, web development teams started to consider a similar approach to website design. They understood that clients were demanding their websites accomplish more. Partially because there were more opportunities for more severe task failure, usability engineers, experience planners, and developers saw the value of introducing use cases for their projects.
With use cases, system designers can define what an actor expects when he comes to a website, what the he must do in order to get the result he expects, and what the system must do, in turn, to deliver that expected result.
And they also must provide for the means to recover from an error. An example of this is in an online shopping cart, where the user has not filled in all the fields or has entered obviously false credit information.
What does the system show in return? Use cases help teams to identify the optimal workflow, provide safeguards that make that workflow the most likely outcome, and anticipate – in spite of those safeguards – what the likely errors are and how to recover from them.
The goals of use cases
Building a book of use cases during the planning stages of creating a website provides several important benefits:
- Helps prioritize. It helps to identify features that provide the highest business value. This is of particular importance, as it helps companies decide what features are most critical to the successful implementation of the overarching business strategy.
- Reduces risk. Each feature takes a certain amount of time to develop. With use cases, it’s easier to estimate how much time (and money) it will take to build a feature. Joined with the budget for the project and the estimate of the value of that feature, it makes it easier to decide which high-risk features are expendable, and which are worth the effort.
- Improves usability. Because tasks are explicitly defined and assigned a business value early in the process, it is easier to anticipate possible obstacles as well as plan an iterative usability test plan. Each iterative chunk should be designed, as much as practical to reduce effort duplication, to test the highest value use cases first, to give the team more time to make improvements.
Web projects will always have a finite budget and a deadline. Use cases help teams establish a common understanding of what user goals are of the highest value to the business and what level of effort is necessary to deliver on the goals. Then it is up to the team to make sure, through their development processes, that the design and interface successfully communicate to the user what they can expect to do and how they can do it.
Ultimately this process helps build better websites that meet the needs of the users and the organization and, through the act of meeting (if not exceeding) audience expectations, endear the brand to the individuals who come to the site.
For more information about use cases:
Use Cases information from usability.gov
Use Case Design for Websites
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