What is usability in software design? Why is it important?

The definition comes that usability is a measure of how easy it is to use a product to perform prearranged tasks. Usability of software design mean when designing a certain kind of software, it should be easy for the users to use that software; meaning that it should be user center design or user-oriented design. It should be combination of user concerns and advocacy from the beginning of the design process and prescriptions that the needs of the user should be principal in any design decisions. How can we have the high usability design?? The most visible aspect of this approach is usability testing, in which users work and interact with the product interface and get the feed backs from the users and make something changes with the designers and developers.

If the designers do not give consideration about usability in their software design or web application design, their product will be less fame and it will find difficulties for the users to use their products. After all, it’s certainly possible to release a working, le

ss-interesting product without performing any usability work at all. But when they take into account of user-centeredness, it can give a much-improved product in several areas. A highly usable product is much easier for users to learn than one for which usability was not a high priority. For internal applications, user acceptance relates to a willingness to use the application to perform the tasks for which it was designed, which helps increase productivity. Increasing usability is one of the factors that can contribute to increased user acceptance. Usability can help to differentiate your products from those of your competitors. If two products are substantively equal in utility, the product with more usability will probably be regarded as superior.

One of the most obvious examples of web application which has got great success and become the most famous website of the world in nowadays, that is “Facebook”. One of the key reasons of becoming most popular one among other social site is that “user-friendliness” of it. The web design of Facebook is easy to learn, use, deal with and understandable for the users. comparing with competitors of Facebook such as Twitter, MySpace, Google plus and so on, Facebook got the highest demand because the designers made their design based on the needs or likes of users and the feature also clear for the users to access. Therefore, usability is one of the most important factors for the software/web application and the user-centeredness or user-friendliness of design is also a need for their product. 

References:

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook