The Credera Brief | Designing For Usability

In our latest edition of The Credera Brief video series, Credera Partner and experience design (XD) expert Lauren Sheehan shares a high-level breakdown of what it means to design for usability and explains why that’s important.

Creating Compelling User Experiences 

Usability is a broad term that explains how easy something is to use, such as an app, website, or product. At Credera, we design for usability through three user-driven lenses: usefulness, usability, and desirability.

1. Is It Useful?

Usefulness measures how well the experience solves a user’s problems, how it helps them achieve what’s important to them, and how quickly the user realizes its value.

2. Is It Useable? 

To determine if an experience is useable, we look to five key items:

• Learnability: Is it simple and intuitive?

• Speed: How quickly are tasks completed?

• Memorability: Is it easy to remember how to use it?

• Error Rate: How often do users have to go back and redo a step?

• Satisfaction: Did the user actually get what they came for?

3. Is It Desirable? 

Desirability considers the user’s emotional state throughout their session and seeks to answer where the ups and downs are. Positive emotions—like clarity, understanding, achievement, and joy—increase usability. Negative emotions—like frustration, confusion, and impatience—quickly erode it.

Visual aesthetic is another strong driver in desirability. Users are drawn to beauty, meaning appealing visuals substantially increase desirability and usability. 

Gaining a Competitive Edge 

Usefulness, usability, and desirability lead to distinction, which causes people to choose your offerings over the competition’s. To provide high-quality experiences that keep users returning, regularly evaluate the usability of your businesses’ experiences, keep the user’s point of view front and center, and recognize the impact of small adjustments.

Interested in learning more about well-developed usability? Dive deeper into our experience design insights for strategies and lessons around creating compelling user experiences.

The Credera Brief 

At Credera, we believe the toughest business challenges are best solved by a team—a team who works together to share knowledge to accomplish their goals.   

We created The Credera Brief series to distill trends and ideas from Credera leaders and experts. These short-form videos share different insights and perspectives across the topic spectrum from MarTech and innovation to strategy and technology.  

You can find the complete series on our YouTube page, or reach out to findoutmore@credera.com to continue the conversation.

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• Innovation; Agile; UX; Design; Business Requirements
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