Tomorrow you will be introduced to a short course on software usability, consisting of a series of 20 daily online lessons.

Each lesson presents one or two usability concepts, requiring no response or extra work from you. Lessons are designed to be read in ten to fifteen minutes and usually consist of one or more links to applicable material on the Web. Unless otherwise noted, each linked page contains the entire lesson for that link; it is not necessary to follow further links on that page to complete the lesson.

Occasionally a lesson will contain a "Reference Material" section with optional links for more in-depth studies.

You can store each reviewed lesson in a Usability mail folder for future reference.

Hopefully this training technique will cause minimal disruption to your other responsibilities, and encourage individual studies when interest and time permit. And by participating, you will know what level of expertise to expect from your fellow employees.

Why Usability Training?

Modular Mining Systems is developing new user interfaces with a greater focus on ease-of-use for the customer. These lessons introduce some basic usability concepts for you to consider during screen design, although they are equally applicable to the design of paper forms, digital car radios, VCRs, or any other user interface. (Lesson One starts with an article titled "Car Radios: It’s Time to Get Angry.")

At the end of this installment, a total of 85 Modular Mining employees will have been introduced to basic usability concepts.

What is Usability?

According to the "IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries," usability is "the ease with which a user can learn to operate, prepare inputs for, and interpret outputs of a system or component."

Usability In Advanced Communication Technologies and Services (USINACTS), a European Commission group concerned with the development of new user-friendly telecommunication systems and services in Europe, states that usability is "the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments."

Topics Included in This Course

  a. recognizing poor usability
  b. users’ expectations
  c. examples and case studies
  d. techniques for creating good usability
  e. optimizing the use of screen components
  f.  incorporating usability in the design process
  g. usability checklists and guidelines

Hopefully these lessons will be interesting and useful to you. If you have any suggestions, please send them along.