Recently though, I have started to pay more attention to usability – in software and in other aspects of life. The image to the right is of my television and associated devices (apologies for the blur). I was looking at this tonight and I started wondering why those of us who work with software are so concerned with usability when it seems like no one else is. Let’s take a look at the various indicator lights that are visible in this picture. First off, there’s my Wii. It is in standby mode and is displaying an amber light. That makes sense, right? It’s not fully on and not fully off. So, amber indicates standby. Below that is my stereo receiver. It is on and has a green light on it. Again, this makes logical sense. Then there is my TV. It is on but it sports a red light to indicate the on state. Finally, in the lower right is my satellite receiver which has both a green and an amber light on it. This would seem to indicate a state somewhere between standby and on, but the device is fully on.

So, has a single sale of one of these devices ever been lost due to the lack of usability the indicator lights represent? I highly doubt it. I also don’t know anyone who has ever test-driven a television’s menus before purchase. Sure, we probably see the menus when the sales guy is talking to us about resolution and contrast ratio, but we’re not paying attention to that. We completely ignore the usability aspects of these common items because we are more concerned with how well the device does its primary function. In the case of a television, we only care about how good the picture looks.

Why then do we as software developers hold ourselves, in theory anyway, to such a higher standard? Why is usability so much more important with software than other products? Could it be a hold over from the days when there was resistance to computers from older generations? Perhaps when there was widespread resistance to anything to do with computers there was a much greater need to make the applications on the computers so amazingly easy to use in order for their benefit to be readily apparent. If so, do we still need to try so hard?

Perhaps it has nothing to do with the user and everything to do with the software. With non-software items it is usually very easy to describe what they do in a short sentence. What does your television do? It allows me to watch shows and movies. What does your razor do? It shaves my facial hair. Now, think about the software you use. Can you easily describe the function of the software the same? Firefox lets me view web pages. It also lets me search Google. It shows me videos. It plays Flash games. The list goes on. Could usability be a problem for software because we are simply trying to jam too much functionality into our applications?

There is an example from the non-software world which makes me think this might be the case. Think of a Swiss Army Knife. You can’t easily describe all of its functions in a single sentence. You also cannot say that the damn thing is in any way a usability success. It is a pain in the ass to use, but it saves you from carrying more stuff. Maybe the answer to software usability is not massive amounts of research and testing to make a Swiss Army Knife application a little more usable. Maybe the answer is to make our applications simpler and make more of them. The popularity of gadgets/widgets and the thousands of wee little Facebook applications could be an indication that this is true.

I don’t know if any of this is really relevant to a discussion on usability, but it is the way things look to me. I have many powerful applications on my computer, but I do tend to prefer using a dashboard widget if available. I tend to frequent websites that focus on one thing and do it really well. It might very well be that what we perceive as usability issues are just a case of Jack of all trades, master of none. If anyone more enlightened on the subject that me has some additional insights, please leave me some comments.