The word ‘Universal’ refers to apply to all cases and ‘Usability’ refers to the degree to which something is able or fit to be used.
A universally usable model is one that can be used by all irrespective of human diversity. For example, Sidewalk curb-cuts are added to accommodate wheelchair users, but the benefits extend to baby-carriage pushers, delivery service workers, bicyclists, and travelers with roller bags. The adaptability needed for users with physical, visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities is likely to benefit users with differing tasks. Hence, it can be said that electronic curb-cuts – system functions designed for people with disabilities – may be usable by everyone in various usage situations. Thus, to practice universal usability strives for designs that gracefully accommodate a diversity of user needs and circumstances.
User Experience and User Interface
User experience (abbreviated as UX) is how a person feels when interfacing with a system. The system could be a website, a web application or desktop software and, in modern contexts, is generally denoted by some form of human-computer interaction (HCI).User experience (UX) design is the process to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.
A user interface, also called a "UI" or simply an "interface," is the means to control a software application or hardware device. A good user interface provides a "user-friendly" experience, allowing the user to interact with the software or hardware in a natural and instinctive way. User interface (UI) design is the process used to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, fixating on looks or style. It is aimed to create interfaces which are simple and pleasant to use. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms like voice-controlled interfaces.
“User Experience Design” is often used interchangeably with terms such as “User Interface Design” and “Usability”. However, while usability and user interface (UI) design are consequential aspects of UX design, they are subsets of it – UX design covers a prodigious array of other areas, additionally. A UX designer is concerned with the entire process of acquiring and integrating a product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.
Accessibility
Accessibility addresses discriminatory aspects of the user experience online for people with disabilities. When a website is accessible, it means that people with disabilities can equally perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the content presented. It also means that users can participate and contribute without barriers.
Hence, accessibility is mostly concerned with making the content and functionality of websites accessible – within reach to all whereas universal usability goes one step further striving to make the content and function accessible and usable by all.
Usability
Usability and accessibility are slightly different lenses to assess user experience.
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses the ease-of-use of the user interfaces. It is a measure of user satisfaction during the use of the product.
The major components of usability can be listed as:
Learnability: A usable product should be easy to learn. In this busy world, no one has time to utilize a product which is arduous to decipher. User friendliness is one of the most important things that a user feels in a product and hence it needs to be a priority while making design decisions.
Efficiency: A usable product that is efficient should allow its user to perform his tasks quickly and effectively. Missing of this factor in design may lead to the loss of trust of its users. Keeping user’s goal in mind in design stage helps to achieve this component.
Memorability: A good product is the one that do not require its user to memorize it. Instead, user should be able to go through the layout and flow easily whenever he comes to use the product. It is required for a design to meet human’s psychological behavior and expectations so that no extra effort has to be put to remember its details.
Error Tolerance: A product’s usability can also be measured by the way it responds to human errors. A usable product aims to resolve errors seamlessly.
Satisfaction: This usability component requires providing a congenial and satisfactory experience to its users. On using a product, the user must be able to fulfill his requisites in a way that he feels a desire to come back again to the same product. Making user satisfaction a priority in design process avails to build a good relationship between user and product.
On ignoring the usability components it is difficult to learn the product and there are chances of more errors. Since it is a difficult to use product, it requires more cost to provide support to users. Also, the trust of users is lost if they get unexpected behavior from product. Therefore, it is important to ensure proper usability of a product.
To ensure usability of a product, (i) it should be made part of design process from the beginning; (ii) usability testing should be performed at various stages of design.
This analysis makes conspicuous the consequentiality of usability in a product’s life cycle. If a product is not utilizable for its users, then chances of its failure are high. Usability is an essential factor that plays a key role in success of a product.
Why focus on Universal Usability?
Human-computer interaction (HCI) pioneer Ben Shneiderman defines universal usability as “having more than 90% of all households as successful users of information and communications services at least once a week.” He goes on to explain that, to achieve universal usability, designers need to “support a wide range of technologies, to accommodate diverse users, and to help users bridge the gap between what they know and what they need to know.”
Hence, it’s important to think about universal usability as a goal and not a consequence.
To move beyond the “typical” user:
The first step toward the goal of universal usability is to let go of the notion that we are designing for a “typical” user. Universal usability accounts for users of all ages, experience levels, and physical or sensory limitations. Users also vary widely in their technical circumstances: in screen size, network speed, browser versions, and specialized software such as screen readers for the visually impaired. Each of us inhabits multiple points on the spectrum, which is constantly shifting with our change in needs. For example, virtually all adults over fifty have some form of mild to moderate visual impairment. And within that context, our needs change as we move from viewing web pages from the back of an auditorium to sitting in front of a large desktop display monitor to walking down the street peering at a small mobile display.
Recent laws made it mandatory that some products be made more accessible. There has been a rapid increase in the number of older individuals. Also, there has been a rise in mobile computing which made it necessary for products to be usable in a wide range of environments and circumstances.
Hence, a broad user definition that includes the full range of user needs and contexts is the first step to produce universally usable designs.
Hence, the basic principles for universal usability can be listed as:
- Equitable and Flexible use
- Simple and Intuitive
- Perceptible Information
- Tolerance for Error
- Low Physical Effort
- Size and Space for Approach and use
The major challenges to universal usability:
- To support a broad range of hardware, software, and network access. With the advance of (Information and Communications Technology) ICT, users' hardware, software, and network configurations keeps on changing. The variety of ICT products creates involute systems with a broad range of hybridity. For example, software product usable to users running Windows 10 on a Dell laptop with broadband Internet access would not be much usable to those who have Windows 98 on a Pentium II desktop with 56K dial-up.
- To accommodate individual differences among users, such as age, gender, disabilities, literacy, culture, income, and so forth. Individual differences can be roughly categorized into three types: physical, cognitive, and socio-cultural. In the field of HCI, research attempts have been centering on accommodating physical and cognitive differences by isolating various specific factors such as spatial ability, speed of movement, eye–hand coordination, and so forth. However, it has been demonstrated that individual differences are difficult to pin down and difficult to generalize from one context to another.
- To bridge the knowledge gap between what users know and what they need to know about a specific system. This can be achieved to certain extent by (i) Building a user model to access individual user's background knowledge on a specific system; (ii) Integrating the mechanism of evolutionary learning.
Current trends in universal usability research include:
- Multimodal or adaptive user interface
- Universal usability of commercial and e-government websites
- Interface solutions for older adult users and users with disabilities
- Contextualization of universal usability
References:
http://web.mit.edu/16.459/www/UnivUsab.pdf
https://www.webstyleguide.com/wsg3/2-universal-usability/4-guidelines.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_usability
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
https://blog.prototypr.io/usability-a-key-part-of-design-process-f0d33cf69a97
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