Usability, User Experience, and Learner Experience
By Mark Notess, Usability Specialist, Indiana University

E-learning stocks are a rare bright spot in a gloomy tech market these days. Boosters of on-line learning promote its lower costs, broader accessibility, and personalization potential. But much e-learning still has slow adoption and high dropout rates. Online learning leaves many students frustrated or unenthusiastic. The good news is that concepts and processes for addressing these shortfalls in learner experience can be found in the field of usability. In this paper, I outline ways in which the field of usability, properly understood, can help online learning fulfill its promise.

Usability Defined

"Usability" is finding its way into common speech, and its adjectival cousin "usable" is widespread: We talk not only about usable websites but also about usable information and even usable buildings. I recently found a recipe on the web for "Usable Chicken." The term has been around longer than you may think--it is a by-product of the industrial revolution, given new currency in the information age. "Usable" means "able to be used." Its new popularity arises from the excruciating un-usefulness of so much software. Granted, many mechanical devices are difficult to use, VCRs and microwave ovens being the most commonly cited sources of use-anguish. But software, with its hangs, cryptic error messages, and enforced waiting, has introduced new refinements in pain. And so usability has moved from being a binary attribute—I can use it or I can't—to being a continuous one, a measurable continuum, and hence a distinct discipline with its own jargon, methods, and societies. In fact, "usability" has come to mean not just an attribute but also a set of processes, even the people who apply the processes.

Usability as an Attribute

Usability is a measurable attribute of a product. Its definition is not standardized in the same way that, for example, some performance measurements have been assigned standard benchmarks. We cannot say something is "96.3% usable" and have people know what we mean. What we can do, however, is specify a user profile, a set of tasks, and a context of use. Then we can measure and report such metrics as task completion time and rate, error rate, and user satisfaction.

These sorts of metrics form the basis for usability goals. We might state a goal specifying that "95% of users install the software correctly in fifteen minutes or less fewer without having to call technical support." This can be measured in a lab setting. If we do our work well, we can help our company predict support-call volumes relative to unit sales.

Usability as a Process

If usability is a measurable attribute with a financial impact, the question arises how to ensure or improve it. Processes that attempt to ensure or improve usability—commonly called usability engineering or user-centered design—observe two principles:

• Know your user. Before you design something, make sure you understand who your customer is. This includes user characteristics, motivations, and context.
• Iterate. Don't expect to build something right the first time. Build a prototype and evaluate it; then fix what doesn't work. Evaluate and redesign until it is good enough to release.

Beyond these basics, usability-enhancing processes may include such methods as:

• usability goals or metrics.
• design guidelines.
• heuristic evaluations.
• cognitive walkthroughs.
• usability testing.
• participatory design.
• field studies.

These methods are described later in this paper.

Usability as a Functional Group

In large organizations, people who know how to facilitate usability are sometimes in a separate functional group. "We'll send it over to Usability," the project team says (usually after it is too late to fix anything). Usability groups often have labs where prototypes and products can be subjected to user testing while the users' winces and groans can be observed through cameras or one-way mirrors, or recorded on videotape.

Usability groups within large organizations face several problems. They often have to work hard to justify their existence because they don't produce anything (other than criticism and reports). They sometimes have trouble convincing their client organizations to involve them in product development from the very beginning. They can feel isolated and undervalued. Some organizations choose instead to sprinkle usability expertise throughout their organization, making usability a part of their product development rather than an optional add-on. This has its own disadvantages--for example, it is harder to justify the cost of a user-testing lab. And the sprinkled usability people run the risk of losing some of their objectivity by being tied too closely to the product development organizations. But the usability people are sometimes happier with this model. They feel they can make more valuable contributions, and they are less likely to be seen as extraneous.

In a business context, usability must be balanced with business objectives, technical constraints, time constraints, etc. Usability is just one of many product attributes about which appropriate business tradeoffs must be made.

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