Rommil Santiago: eCommerce, Marketing & Management

Useless Usability: Missing the Forest for the Trees

[caption id=”attachment_1032” align=”alignright” width=”330” caption=”Remember to always step back to see the bigger picture.”]Remember to always step back to see the bigger picture.[/caption]Let it be known that I’m a strong proponent of usability. I have run a good number of user-tests and card-sorts. I’ve watched countless videos and screen captures of user-sessions. I’ve read Jakob Nielson’s book (and am eagerly awaiting his latest Eye-Tracking book which keeps getting delayed *sigh*), as well as Steve Krug’s inspiring book, Don’t Make Me Think. I’ve preached the virtues of usability to all those that would listen, and I’ve bored my friends with endless ramblings of the heuristic analyses I performed on lack-lustre sites. Thus, it pains me to say that I missed the point. I missed the mark. I screwed up. I had it all wrong. In the end, usability is not always the be-all and end-all of web design. In fact, I’m actually convinced it’s not always as important as many UX designers say (I know, blasphemy!).

So, I’ll cut to the chase. Usability? Often, it’s useless.

All that designing for usability does is make websites easier to use (duh!). But how crucial is usability to the well-being of a website? I contend that it’s not that important. Yes, usability is a marketing issue. It is indeed a touch point that should be tended to and nurtured to improve ROI. But the way I see it, usability can only make a well thought-out site better, and a poorly thought-out site more bearable.

What usability will never do is automatically work out how to satisfy users in a way that is inline with your business goals. Furthermore, usability will never promote your most important business services. So while many usability experts will insist that usability has to be kept in mind throughout the design process, I would suggest that we all take yet another step back. Before we lay a single pen to paper, or any mouse to pixel, we must do several essential things:


  • Know what the user wants.

  • Know what we want the website to do.

  • Figure out how to make it accomplish these goals.


The Norman Door: Redux


If you’ve ever read Donald Norman’s, The Design of Everyday Things, you’re familiar with the “Norman Door”. Essentially Norman examines exactly what makes a well designed door, i.e., the affordances and visual cues that help you figure out how it works. While this is a great illustration of what makes a well-designed door, I feel Norman misses out on a key issue: A well-designed door is rendered useless if it leads no where of interest for the user.

I’m quite convinced that even if a site breaks every usability guideline in The Book, twice - the site will ultimately succeed by reaching its business goals as long as the site implies that the desired information or application exists on the site, i.e., it has a strong scent of information (obviously within reason). This is where knowing what your users’ wants plays a role. Even if you have non-standard navigation behaviour, and poor legibility, as long as the user is convinced you know what he or she wants, and that you have it somewhere on your site that can be eventually reached, I guarantee you’ll be surprised as to how much time he or she will invest to find what they want from your site (E- and F-patterns be damned!). And as long as these desires are inline with what your goals are for your site, bob’s your uncle.

So should we relegate usability to the backburner?

Of course not, nor should we ignore accessibility, find-ability or web standards. But know that these are simply tools in our web designer/developer/architect/producer/ninja toolbelts to make a solid website amazing. As web workers we need to be attentive to strategy, have a big-picture view, and raise our concerns as they occur. We need to constantly ask ourselves,”Is my work adding customer-value?”, “Will my work help the bottom-line?” If not, we should re-evaluate whether we’re working in the right direction. Are we obsessing over silly details? Are we improving usability for usability sake? Before we add bells and whistles, and optimize for ease of use, we need to get the basics right. We need to give the customer whatever they want that is part of our offering and is beneficial for both parties.

So with all this said, I present to you:

My Useless Usability Litmus-test:

Your usability work is pointless if it falls in any of the following categories.

  • You’re performing card-sorts to figure out what direction to go.

  • You’re obsessing over affordances for homepage real-estate that is dedicated to non-business goals.

  • You’ve followed all the usability guidelines “to the T” but have never had a detailed talk with marketing.

  • You are not able to list any specific business goals that your work accomplishes.


Essentially, we all have to work together. Become integrated and communicate with each other. Time is precious and money is short - so why waste either on anything that doesn’t get us where we need to go: more conversions.

What are your thoughts? Is usability getting too much of the limelight? Have you ever missed the forest for the trees?