Measuring Usability
Quantitative Usability, Statistics & Six Sigma by Jeff Sauro
Quantitative Usability, Statistics & Six Sigma by Jeff Sauro
Jeff Sauro • May 24, 2011
When we look to improve the user experience of software or websites, sometimes the best improvements aren't slight tweaks to the interface but involve eliminating steps altogether. | Keyless entry: We get in and out of our cars a lot—often with our hands full of kids and our conspicuous consumptions. There has been a steady evolution in improving the unlocking experience, from keys to buttons and now my favorite, the method that senses the key in your pocket and unlocks the door as soon as you insert your hand into the handle. |
 | Auto-closing toilet seat: The germs, the slamming and poorly timed falls: Auto-closing toilet seats have effectively removed a step from this frequent and necessary biological process. Now us guys have no excuse for leaving that lid up! |
 | No Hotel check-out: An express check-out sounds like an improvement over a regular check-out but anything with the word "express" usually means slow (take for example United Express—these are actually the smaller and slower planes). But what's the point of standing in a line when you need to leave? Having your folio slipped under the door or just emailed to you gives you more time to get to the airport and stand in more lines. |
 | Go right to the Rental Car: You've finally reached your destination after hours of flight-delays only to stand in another line and be sold on the merits of optional insurance coverage or pre-paying on gas? What a horrible way to start a trip! Why not just go right to car and skip a line? National Rental Car gets a bonus point because not only do they eliminate a step but they give me some sense of control by letting me (and my wife and three kids) pick the car. |
 | Children's pain reliever dosing: Kids get sick early and often. Pain-relievers can mean a few extra hours of sleep for parent and child. It's hard enough to hold and console a child while sleep-deprived, but you also have to locate and remember the correct dose of medicine to give. The dosing directions are often hidden under a tiny-flap on the bottle and require two hands, a lot of light and a steady eye to read the 4-point font. If you get this far and your child is under 2 you'll be disappointed to read the dosing instructions : "Ask a doctor." This well-intended omission leads to parents guessing the correct dose--often incorrectly. So much so that the FDA has recently recommended re-adding the instructions. |
  | Toilet Paper Guards: The only thing worse than industrial single-ply toilet paper is not being able to actually get any off the roll. I know there's a band of toilet paper thieves out there but does ripping off a square have to be so painful? You've probably encountered these medieval torture chambers at your office or public bathroom. In fact, you can see in the two images how the "users" have worked around this restriction by sticking another roll of paper on-top of the dispenser or on the coat-hook. |
 | Plastic Packaging: Pretty much everything comes packed in plastic-wrapping these days. It often takes more time to open these plastic shells than the interest your child has in the contents. My favorites are the ones that require a box-cutter, scissors, screwdriver and then band-aids. |
 | Sorting the Recyclables: Recycling is great, but when you have a lunch tray with food, cans, paper, plastic and undetermined material, even the greenest person can make some mistakes and hold up the line. Forming the openings to be shaped like the appropriate contents probably helps. But I know one thing that will improve recycling rates even more: take the burden off the user and have the sorting done at the waste-plant. There might be some technology needed but many places can already sort the material. Having a single trash container that also recycles would be a win-win. |
Jeff Sauro is the founding principal of Measuring Usability LLC, a company providing statistics and usability consulting to
Fortune 1000 companies.
He is the author of over
15 journal articles and 3 books on statistics and the user-experience.
More about Jeff...
Measuring Errors in the User Experience
5 Valuable Skills for UX Professionals
How to Conduct a Usability test on a Mobile Device
10 Things to Know about Net Promoter Scores and the User Experience
97 Things to Know about Usability
Why you only need to test with five users (explained)
10 Things to Know about Usability Problems
The Five Most Influential Papers in Usability
How common are usability problems?
What five users can tell you that 5000 cannot
A Brief History of the Magic Number 5 in Usability Testing
Confidence Interval Calculator for a Completion Rate
Top 10 Research-Based Usability Findings of 2010
25 Resources for Measuring Usability
8 Ways to Show Design Changes Improved the User Experience
 | Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research The most comprehensive statistical resource for UX Professions (JUST RELEASED) Buy on Amazon |
 | Excel & R Companion to Quantifying the User Experience Detailed Steps to Solve over 100 Examples and Exercises in the Excel Calculator and R Buy on Amazon | Download |
 | A Practical Guide to the System Usability Scale Background, Benchmarks & Best Practices for the most popular usability questionnaire Buy on Amazon | Download |
 | A Practical Guide to Measuring Usability 72 Answers to the Most Common Questions about Quantifying the Usability of Websites and Software Buy on Amazon | Download |
