Usability

Over the past week our group has been focusing on analyzing the usability of the Neighborhood Health Services web site. Appropriately, we are studying usability in lecture as well.
On Thursday we learned to define usability as both a quality and a process. When testing for usability we want to know what impact the product has on the end-users. The process by which is to design the web site with the users' needs as the central focus. This is important because when a user is unable to navigate effectively through a web site to find the information they are looking for there will leave the site and look elsewhere. If a web site cannot provide the user with the information they need then that web site is not preforming its primary function.
We also learned about usability engineering, which is an approach to system
design in which levels of usability are specified quantitatively in advance, and the system is engineered toward these measures, and user-centered design, which is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.