I am not a designer and I could not design images and a color scheme for a website to save my life.  However, the most beautiful website with vivid, popping imagery and a great color scheme does not always mean that the website has good usability.  In this article I am going to talk about User Interface Design – but I will not be referring to the design aspect of colors and images, rather, design in the terms of usability, or the user’s ability and desire to use your software.

Usability is the difference between good and great software (using the term software generally for both desktop applications and websites).  While there are technical, financial, project management, and other factors that can affect software project success, usability is ultimately what can make a software project succeed or fail.  This is an no-brainer but low usability = low use.  How the users perceives the software in terms of how they like the software, how it makes them feel, and if it makes their job easier or harder to perform, affect the user’s willingness to use the software.

The Simplicity Factor
How is it that simple and sometimes plain or even ugly websites become the most widely used and most profitable?  Take Google, eBay, Amazon, YouTube, and MySpace for example.  While largely lackluster in design, all of these websites are very simple to use and push function over design.  These sites are so simple to use that anybody can use them and as it turns out, everyone does use them.  Enough said.

Task Based Interface
What is the user actually trying to accomplish?  Putting all of the options in front of the user at one time, on one screen is way too confusing.  Highly usable interfaces should focus on one task at a time and guide users through that task.  Ask the following two questions:

• “What content is the user expecting to see while performing this task?”
• “What actions will the user expect to do while on this task?”

Draw the user’s attention to information and options by using subtle styling clues such as layout & grouping, light background colors, thin borders, etc.  If more information is needed from the user to complete a task, show a dialog to gather more precise information rather than cluttering one screen with all options available.  Use tips, tool-tips, or inline-callouts for a call to action.  For example, showing an inline tip or callout when the user is creating a password is much more informative than having a user type in their password twice, and then hit the submit button only to learn that the password that they entered was too short.  Inline tips that appear when needed can explain why information is needed, how to enter the information, and ultimately help the user instantly know what is expected of them so they do not have to resort to help documents, use the Contact Us link, or leave your website in frustration.

A Rockin’ Interface
Fortunately for you, at Rockfish our passion encompasses design, usability, and functionality which you will find in all of our products.  Usability is engrained in our company, from sending large e-mail attachments via filesend.us, to delivering content to your website via our advanced Content Management System.  Simply put, our interfaces rock!