Posts Tagged "usability"

Can we measure usability?

Posted by David de Alba on Feb 11, 2013 in Usability | 0 comments

Usability is a discipline to study how to design applications thinking in the user to make interactions easier. Therefore, taking into account that not all users are equal, it seems really difficult to find a quantitative way to measure usability.

There are several reason why you want to measure usability. They say that if you can measure and express a concept in numbers, your knowledge is complete. On the other hand if you can’t measure or express it in numbers your knowledge is limited and incomplete.

Usability & Design. Two faces of the same coin

Posted by David de Alba on Aug 27, 2012 in Usability | 0 comments

The technology market gets more and more demanding everyday making you create solutions that have more innovative design and are more usable at the same time. These should be two intrinsic characteristics of any technology solution, but some things that should go hand in hand, in occasions, have more a parasite-like relationship: The  more you improve one, the more you sacrifice the other and vice versa.

Ideas world vs. Real world. What can Plato teach us about usability?

Posted by David de Alba on Jun 18, 2012 in Usability | 0 comments

When Plato tried to teach his philosophy about ideas, could it be that he was thinking about how to design a web application? Maybe he wasn’t completely off topic…

According to his Allegory of the Cave, there were two worlds, the ideas world and the real world. In the ideas world we had the authentic representation of things. They were considered pure and immutable objects. However, in the real world things were shadows of those ideas perceived through our senses, therefore the image we get of ideas in the real world is highly influenced by the light deflected on them.

You decide to improve your software quality: and now what?

Posted by Guillermo Villarrubia on May 31, 2012 in Software quality | 0 comments

Have you already decided to increase the quality of your software? Good choice!! Congratulations and welcome to this unknown but emerging discipline of computing engineering. By applying this discipline to your software development you will realize, little by little, that your programs are more effective, easier to maintain and cheaper!

How much longer are you going to fight lost battles?

Posted by David de Alba on Jan 26, 2012 in Software quality, Usability | 0 comments

“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”  The Art of War, Sun Tzu

Not considering your final users and not involving them in your development process can lead to the wrong perception that your clients are the “enemy” and you can find yourself fighting “battles” that could have been avoided with little effort and a different approach.