It's all about usability

From a software engineer point of view, user interface is very trivial in terms of the complexity involved in developing it. I personally don’t like to work on the user interface part of the products as I feel it less challenging. When it comes to the end users, user interface is all that matters. They can’t see what happens in the background on the click of a button; all they care about is how easy is it to click that button. 

The other day I was talking to my dad who works for a nationalized bank for more than 27 years now, about the software used in his bank. He says, in the early days of his career there were many challenges in the job with lot of number crunching, etc. but these days with the introduction of computers in banking, the major challenge for him is using the software and not the real job! 

I guess they are using a retail banking software called Finacle from Infosys. When we write software for a general product specification that caters to different kind of users, we end up adding lot of features that may not be used in day to day activities or in normal scenarios by the majority. If I get it right, that’s what adds complexity to the software that my dad uses. He says, just for opening a saving account he has to go through multiple screens and that also not by clicking next, next, next rather by choosing things explicitly in the menu or by using a shortcut keys. That’s stupid!

I had worked for the consumer electronics industry and I know how much money is being spent on the usability part of the device. We used to strip down the interface to the maximum possible extent giving only the options that are mandate. Nothing extra, as that would complicate the interface and would lead too many clicks or button presses to use a particular functionality. The goal used to be minimum number of clicks or button presses!

Then why isn’t the same theory applied for the business solutions software? Why do people bloat up the software with too many features which makes the day to day functionalities not readily accessible? Why don’t they make the software customizable for a particular user by him? Being a software engineer I myself don’t use many websites and e-commerce facilities given by my bank or my mobile operator because of the difficulty in using it, you can imagine what a novice computer user would do.

Is that the fault of the software developers? Nope, I would say its the fault of the project sponsor for not insisting on the usability and also on the BA team which didn't state this as a explicit requirement and express the need for the specialized people for usability design in the team.

But I guess things are changing now, I see a lot of importance being given to usability, and people are considering it to be a great deal. That’s a welcome move, but still I am not sure how many businesses are interested in paying for usability consulting job as a part of the business solution development. Another concern to be noted is, not all software services companies has this competency on board who can help the software teams to come up with highly usable systems, that makes the end users life easy.

It’s time for software services companies’ to start investing in the usability domain in software development & educate their customers about the importance of usability. If not, rather improving the business, the IT spending they do now would kill their business in the long run. As more and more businesses are going online, usability of a website could be a competitive advantage for a business. Believe me,

A complex e-commerce website could drive away your potential customers.

Fully loaded software which automates a business process might reduce employee productivity.

Wake up & start investing in usability, because that's the only thing the end user feels!