Welcome to the Usability Zone

Since I was given the honor of being the zone leader for the usability zone I have been thinking about how I can get this zone off the ground and what would be relevant to the usability zone.

My first thought was well... let’s break up the term into its parts. So usability becomes use + ability. So usability is about our ability to use a product or website. No wait that does not seem right. Usability is about how useable an application is to various users. That still does not convey the right message as it says more about whether the application meets the user’s expectations and not whether it is accessible.

Yeah, that is the word I was looking for, accessible. Usability is a fine balance between the accessibility of your application and the ease of use. So with this in mind I see that the usability zone covers a wide variety of topics.

In recent times these topics have become more and more part of the developer community but a lot of confusion has also arisen. My aim is to demystify what usability and accessibility is all about and, encourage all developers to make this part of their development culture and not just an afterthought as it is now in most development and design companies.