Usability is important, but could it kill me?

 We all remember our first steps as a programmers … who put enthusiasm about usability aspects? Existing technologies didn’t lead to it, and green color fills everything; at least it was green, hopefull green :-)

  I discovered the importance of usability with an university professor whose name I can’t remember, but I do remember the article that made me thought over usability: the one about the ballots for the elections in Florida state (see http://bit.ly/e1SXfq) ,  back in the Presidential race of 2000, and its importance in the final result, that left the world’s largest democracy in the hands of George W. Bush. Can such a country make that mistake? 

  Doubts aside, about the mistake and whether it was really made on purpose, what become clear is the importance ofusability, led perhaps to the largest of its consequences, the control of the first world economy power.

  But let’s go down to other levels, to which me and you, as an ordinary user, could concern the importance of usability; whatis behind an “human error”? facing some disasters, this is the term than is used to attribute to the cause of a specific accident, but, could it be this one due to a design error in some cases? We aren’t talking about a wrong-designed light switch - that of course exists - but for example, a system to close an emergency valve for gas emisions; a bad design can make the user do something wrong and the disaster happens, and this, happens, less and less, but happens. Not everybody comes from the same place, and has the same culture, that’s why all the factors must be taken into account to avoid that kind of situations.

  In technology, especially in software design, most of us won’t get into designs that can lead to some physical problem, but an occasional headache to the user, who eventually will choose another option more “usable”. Professionals are more and more aware of that kind of aspects, but the latest agile methods of sotware development, widely implemented, made in some ocassions  we don’t worry about this aspects at first to be done at last because the lack of time, a situation that might fit at some waterfall developments years ago, and that in the new models, can provoke the full redesign from the first stage of development, something undesireable, or excluding certain aspects, which can be fatal.

  If we merge the agile development model to the development of interfaces for applications with limited screen and hardware capabilities, the problem grows, because the programmer is used to do PC applications and web in devices with different capabilities that what we have now, and a wide range of users that are used to use them, and we have to take the challenge that they can, know and want to take advantage of those technologies.

  In the first week of Tetuan Valley, we saw how the main part of the projects are focused in the mobile devices development, and the methodology to use during the six weeks fits in the agile development. Let’s take into account usability aspects for our prototypes. Maybe we won’t physically die, as it’s said in the headline of this article, but the decision of an investor or bussiness angel about one idea or another might be highly influenced by that aspect, and there, you might be dead as a start-up.