Usability Quotes

Here are some great quotes from different sources. They make a fascinating and educational read...or grab one for your next PowerPoint presentation on user experience!

  • Usability as Strategic Business Tool
  • User Centered Viewpoints
  • Hard to use and Frustrating sites
  • Intranet Usability
  • Importance of a good user interface

Usability as Strategic Business Tool

"Web usability may be viewed as a strategic means to increasing a company's competitive advantage which is essential for the survival of business in e-commerce. The goals of usability should be seen as the business goals of the organization." -Forrester Research, 1998

"In order to be really successful, usability needs to become part of the everyday culture of the organization". -Saunders and Arnfeld in The Politics of Usability

"Business success is always defined by the quality of the overall customer experience before, during and after a transaction." -Forrester Research, Feb. 2001

"Websites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue and erode brands. New media executives can apply a disciplined approach to improve all aspects of ease-of-use. Start with usability audits to assess specific flaws and understand their causes. Then fix the right problems through action-driven design practices. Finally maintain usability with changes in business processes." -Forrester Research "Why most websites fail" Sept. 1998

"Jupiter Communications reports that word-of-mouth is second only to a strong offline brand in building consumer trust. Almost half of consumers surveyed by Jupiter, cite word-of-mouth as a key influence in their online shopping habits." -Iconocast, May 27, 1999

User Centered Viewpoints

"We are overwhelmed with an onslaught of technological devices that have been designed from the machine-centered point of view, technological devices that confuse us, that alter normal social relations. Our self-created technological world controls and dominates us. The signs are clear, from confusion and difficulty in using household and office appliances to a heavy incidence of human error in industry" - Donald Norman in Things that Make us Smart

"'I want to solve the major problems in the study of human intelligence,' he says."I want to achieve a theoretical understanding of how the brain works. My research into human cognition is a lifelong pursuit. It began before Palm, and it will last beyond Palm. The research and the company go together. I intend to use the next decade of my life to make my work on cognition much more visible." -Jeff Hawkins, founder of the Palm Pilot (Fast Company 1998 Interview)

"Consumer preference and motivation is far less influenced by the tangible attributes of product and service than the sub-conscious sensory and emotional elements derived by the total experience." -Dr. Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School- Laboratory of the Consumer Mind

"The logical approach is the wrong way to go about understanding the needs of customers. You have to talk to them, watch them; this is the only way to understand their interests, their motives, their needs". -Donald Norman

"A branded customer experience is a consistent representation and flawless execution, both online and offline, of the emotional connection, experience, and relationship you want your customers to have with your brand. Your customer's experience with your brand includes how that customer feels when he is in your brand's presence-whether he's using the telephone, visiting a physical storefront, surfing a Web site, reading an e-mail you sent, or actually using your product" -Patricia B. Seybold

Hard to use and Frustrating sites

"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them." -Werner Heisenberg

Top 10 online blunders:

  1. Requiring a password to access customer service.
  2. Making the customer service section hard to find.
  3. Not offering search engines for general customer queries.
  4. Having no site map.
  5. Not internationalizing your site.
  6. Not responding to customer messages.
  7. Allowing customer channels to be out of service because systems are down.
  8. Employing unfriendly phone agents.
  9. Not integrating between click and brick (Web and traditional stores).
  10. Requiring customers to download software to get service.

Source: 2001 Gartner Group Inc., Stamford, Conn.

Intranet Usability

Investing in a corporate intranet or portal? Here's the information employees really want:

  1. Employee directories/phone lists
  2. Technical or white papers
  3. Information about their own and other companies' products
  4. Job-related books
  5. Tips on best practices
  6. Trade journals and publications
  7. Standards and specifications
  8. Technical training
  9. Organizational charts
  10. Market analysis

Source: Outsell Inc., Burlingame, Calif.; survey of 4,700 corporate end users, February 2001

Importance of a good user interface

One of the biggest failures at Boo was to assume that the front end was not a technology issue... A web site front-end is interface design, it's not a marketing exercise. It should include people who are versed in this and not just people who know about pretty colors. Ultimately, I think this was one of the big failure factor in the company. LESSON: No matter how good your backend systems are, the users will only remember your front end. Fail there and you will fail, period. -Tristan Louis, senior adviser to the CEO of boo.com (Comment on demise of e retailer Boo.com)

"Now more than ever the promise of electronic commerce and online shopping will depend to a great extent upon the user interface and how people interact with the computer. In particular, success will depend upon marketers understanding that consumer interaction with the information technology influences subsequent consumer behavior through information search costs. -Hoque and Lohse 1998

"Usability is critical for any application, but for mass-market software, usability spells success or failure more clearly than any other feature." -Dr. Jerold M. Grochow, Chief Technology Officer, American Management Systems

Information Resources Inc. (IRI), the Chicago-based outfit that tracks all sorts of consumer data, recently found that packaged-goods manufacturers are overdelivering - and likely overspending - on Web features that consumers only shrug off.