At its heart, usability is such a commonsense notion that it is amazing how long it took to break into the corporate mainstream. The basic concept of usability is that documents and products should be usable in the real world environments where they function. Ensuring this can be more difficult than it sounds, however, as we all know from bonehead products that defy our basic needs as users. Some things don't work the way they're intended, don't account for our needs, don't work the way we expect, or are simply more difficult than they need to be. This site contains a large collection of problem products. One favorite is the van seat that falls over when you try to slide it back. This is poor usability, because almost every car ever made with a mechanical seat mechanism uses a handle like this to slide the seat back and forth. The van's design defies that lifetime of experience.

Products like these, bad instructions, and difficult-to-navigate websites have inspired a greater focus on usability. There is a Usability Professionals' Association, and a World Usability Day held on the second Thursday in November (which oddly seems less usable than a consistent date). I hope you begin to observe this solemn holiday every year. Many companies now do extensive usability testing before releasing products. Microsoft is becoming much more interested in usability. They even have User Research Studios. Microsoft has even gone so far as to have employees live in people's homes for six months to see how they use products. Companies now realize that user-centered products are good for business.

As for usability in this class, many of you have identified that knowing and understanding an audience will be crucial to writing your instructions (which is accurate for writing any document). Obviously, we lack the time and resources to do extensive, professional usability testing; however, we will carry it out to the best of our abilities.

Usability Tests

An important decision you will have to make is how to conduct your test. You want to select or create a usability test that will give you the kind of feedback you need to assess your instructions properly. There are many types of usability tests, but some are more appropriate for this project than others. Technical Communication Today lists and describes various kinds of tests on page 323. Common tests used in the context of this assignment are:

• Read and Locate Test
• Summary Test
• Protocols
• Surveying
• Interviewing

Usability Questions

Whatever test you choose, focus on getting productive feedback. TCT lists four main questions to keep in mind as you conduct usability testing. All are relevant to the Instructions Project:

• Can they find it? Users want to be able to find the specific information they need very quickly. They don't want to wade through pages of text to find the few relevant instructions. Make sure your document is easy to navigate.
• Can they understand it? Instructions should be easy for the appropriate audience to understand. Pick someone who is not very familiar with the task you're covering, and have them perform it while reading the instructions. Find any places where they are confused or don't understand the terminology, directions, or graphics. Then follow up to find out what might be made more clear.
• Can they do it? This one seems clear enough—can they perform the task at hand in the time expected? If not, something is probably wrong with the instructions. Find any places where your instructions break down, explain something vaguely, or diverge from reality.
• Is it safe? Hopefully none of you will be writing instructions for using dynamite or alligator wrestling (or some combination of those two), but safety is still a concern. Make sure the user isn't doing anything that will cause injury or damage the product. This is a very real concern, because lawyers and judges (and often other entities such as OSHA) are tertiary and gatekeeper audiences for instruction sets.

Peer Testing

One obvious issue with our process of usability testing is that we only have ourselves as the testing pool. This can be a problem, because of the different audiences for our documents. The responses you get from your classmates may not closely reflect the experiences of the document's true audience. This is a major issue in the professional world, and it is why so much time, money, and energy is expended on focus group testing. Nevertheless, the important thing is to produce the best usability tests that you can, even if your classmates aren't the perfect audience for your instructions. I would like to see usability tests that pertain to your instruction sets' true audiences, contexts, and purposes.

Overall, I believe most people intuitively understand usability but lose sight of it when they start designing or writing—especially if the subject is one they know well. You can get so focused on the item or process that you lose sight of the fact that humans will be the ones interacting with your instructions. Usability testing will help ensure that you stay focused on the user and needs of the audience.