Are you sure that your new client induction system, knowledge management system, your accounting system or document production system is as good as it can be? Have you asked the users?
Jakob Nielsen writes a regular column on usability at useit.com
He is recognised as a leader in website and intranet design (eg navigation and search tools) and advocate of usability testing to improve user experiences and therefore site performance.
He believes that the principle of usability applies to any system which interacts with people, from fighter planes to cars to office software.
His column this week is about medical usability. He discusses a recent hospital field study which recorded 22 instances of how a poorly designed medication system resulted in patients getting the wrong medication. These ranged from poor readability and wrong dates to wrong doses. His article does not mention it but I recall recent publicity about an incident where the colour of labelling on a drug bottle had to be changed because it had been confused with a toxic drug in an emergency.
A key quote:
When it comes to user errors caused by bad design, there's a further problem as well: If the interface fails to provide adequate feedback, users might not even realize that they've committed an error.
How many of your office systems could be improved by asking your customers and staff to show you how they use them and problems they face?
As a bonus, the article then describes the writer's difficulty in tracking down the report used as the basis for the original New York Times story on the study.
The article is well worth reading as a case study, not just on your internal systems' usability but also in how to improve your marketing by ensuring newsworthy articles are accessible on your website.
UPDATE: Paul McKey mentioned today that Nielsen's partner, Donald Norman, wrote The Design of Everyday Things. Paul designs e-learning systems and is critical of programs that are compliance-focussed without offering a learning experience for users.
The Usernomics blog discusses "Usability in the news" . Its latest post points to an article on IBM developerworks about the design (or lack of it) of the US tax form.
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Posted by: SHELIAHOLDEN18 | May 26, 2011 at 07:37 AM
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Posted by: bespoke software development | November 10, 2011 at 10:01 AM