Usability’s Where You Find It – A Short Remark on Perceived vs. Objective Usability
Thinking about the claim on the water bottle shown in the picture prompted me to google on the topic of “perceived usabilityâ€Â.
There’s a post by Don Norman on perceived vs. real usability and a short article on the importance of marketing usability (related to an IBM article that does not seem to be online anymore). The point made in latter is that “objective usability†(a term that would be worth its own essay) only unfolds during long-term use. But for the first contact, it’s “perceived usability†that influences the attitude of the user / customer. So, basically, if something looks as if it’s easy to use (or a believable claim is made), the first hurdle is taken. Of course the impression will have to be supported by real usability after that for the product to be successful.
But I think that the “marketing†aspect in usability work really should not be underestimated. Methods for ensuring objective usability should be supplemented by assessments of perceived usability (or “first impressionsâ€Â, so to speak). These assessments could also indicate aspects, which should be paid particular attention to during the following work: if a certain element of the product is immediately perceived as very usable by the test participants it should become one focus of the following phases of usability engineering (e.g. analytical reviews and empirical tests) to make sure that during real use this particular part of the system confirms the impressions of users. So generally speaking: distinct assumptions of users regarding perceived usability should not be disappointed during long-term use. Maybe perceiving something as usable that later turns out not to be is even worse than having a product that is immediately perceived as moderately usable but which confirms that impression during long-term use.
