Usability is something that each and every one of us occurs on a daily basis. We experience usability in both online and in the real world as well. Have a quick think about how many times you’ve thought things like this:
- “Which damn aisle has the pasta in it? Why don’t they have signs?”
- “Okay, so I left in a rush and forgot my GPS and my iPhone doesn’t have service here. Why haven’t I seen a sign for Timbucktoo in 30 kilometres?”
- “Why do I have to fill out this damn form again online for the third freaking time?!?! Give me a decent error message and at least remember what I’ve already typed in before so I can correct it!”
- “Uhhhh, so why doesn’t this train have a map so I can see how many stops there are before I need to get off. Hmm, I’ll just sit here in a mild state of anxiety until I hear my station called over the PA then I guess. Woot!”
Being a designer/developer I have to consider usability on a daily basis. Our company stands for simplicity so of course we have to think about usability as we develop products for our clients. That being said, sometimes a product is developed so rapidly that extra features can cramp usability when the good old “feature creep” tends to kick in when a client gets excited about the end product…but surely that’s a compliment to our work right?
I think I know quite a lot about usability because of a combination of my experience, excessive time spent online and of course my favourite, plain old “common sense”. However, Google has just changed their search and blown my mind with something that I’ve never had to consider before. Language based usability for people who speak and “type” multiple languages.
Google are starting to introduce “virtual keyboards” into their search. The short version of this new feature is that soon you’ll see a little keyboard icon in Google that allows users to click it and a “virtual keyboard” in a second language will be displayed so that people who speak multiple languages won’t have to manually change their regional settings to type letters from a different language.
This might not seem much to you at first, however, even to someone like myself it would make a world of difference if I was in an airport in Armenia and was using an internet café (aside: Haha I had to type Alt+0233 to get é then. Love the irony!) I could eventually get to Google on a foreign keyboard and then click on this icon and click-to-type on a virtual keyboard. Once again I love Google’s work!