Usability Features for developers and UI Designers

Usability is one of the most sort out feature in a Software Product and has a lot of impact on Software Development.

In the present condition of the Market and the user perspective any web application which needs to draw traffic should be attractive and pleasing to the user and also it should be easy to understand and easy to work around and making things simpler than complex and now a days people are so busy or seems to be busy that they are not interested to go through the instructions but directly want to work around the application and when they face a problem they go back to the instructions.

Since the competition is very much and tough to get traffic to the sites as a web application developer/tester it is our utmost responsibility to see that what ever we design, code, test should reach the user. A simple question like this if the functionality is the best in the industry and if it is not very user-friendly or attractive then does it draw traffic to the site until unless it is a service required by the user the user does not matter like visiting a online bank site or a education site etc otherwise the user is not interested to come because the user has lot of options from other sites.

I have been exploring quite a number of sites specially social networking sites, online shopping sites and I my self feel un interested if it is not colorful, user friendly and also if it does not suit me because I have n number of other sites. The only reason we have these many number of sites is that each site is more or less an enhancement of the other site.

Usability is the most neglected part in a software development life cycle. Right from the from the earlier stages of software development these usability features are not looked after and most of the time as a development team we often think that once we finish of the functionality we can look after them they are very small and easy work and miss out. From my experience as a tester I have seen many at times my comments are ignored and have seen developers working on usability features before releasing the product and have seen a havoc situation because the client comes back and demands all these and there is a loss of time, resource and budget and also reputation.

In order to avoid all these and to deliver the product in a desirable manner we have come up with some check list for the developers and the UI Designers so that even before the product comes for testing they are unit tested so as to avoid the time in finding and fixing the bugs which proved very useful and worth in implementing.

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Usability Features for developers and UI Designers