Why can't the developer not think like a user...?

Usability... Microsoft is known for it. She (Microsoft) has given birth to some of the most user friendly software known to man (and woman).

So the question is why oh why do we need a usability engineer. Why can't an Engineer, not think about usability. Sometimes we ignore simple issues like a two digit no. column on a grid is too darn wide and a description column which needs to be wide is too narrow for the description to be visible completely. Why oh why didn't we think about that before we were told by the user?

Because we were too busy churning out the high priority features so that they can be delivered on time. Too busy writing tests to ascertain the credibility of the application. Delivering non functional requirements like reliability, scalability, maintainability, security, and so on and so forth... Too busy designing, coding, testing refactoring... Delivering the bare necessities...

So the width of the column is the smallest thing in usability... there should be stuff thought of that is beyond imagination. Like how to make an application support operation without using the mouse at all. Completely with the keyboard. Or how to provide pointers so the user can intuitively know what to do next. Minimum mouse clicks... and perhaps hundred other pointers only a usability engineer can give you.

So how important is usability? What is the percentage of time that should be devoted to Usability when making the estimates? Inviting responses... Please comment...

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2008
  Usability is of great importance and can have implications far beyond the small surface issues mentioned. For example Larry Osterman told the story of how long it took to implement the per application volume control. Personalization goes right along with usability. Configuration options that have obscure descriptions make it difficult to customize the UI behaviour to your liking. One person's usability can be another person's horror show. Usability is not obvious to developers and takes a special effort. When you factor in the deeper changes required to make something truly usable, 50% would be a reasonable amout of time to spend on usability.

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2008
  There's another reason: the developer is too close to the application. They know how it's supposed to work, so the interface tends to appear intuitive to them...it's very hard as the developer of an application to put yourself in the position of someone who is completely unfamiliar with it.