Usability of Web and Mobile Apps: Simple Principles to Go By

by Nataliia Vasylyna | April 27, 2016 8:46 am

The users of mobile and web applications would always prefer efficient and easy-to-use apps over entangled and annoying ones.

No wonder that user experience is an important aspect for a software testing company.

What Principles Allow Delivering Apps with Better Usability?

• Testers and layout designers should put themselves in the shoes of a customer. There is always a temptation to create a fancy frontend, but a clean interface is typically much more satisfying for customers.
• Mobile and web customers should be able to use an app intuitively, without having to read a lot of documentation.
• Navigation, especially for mobile products, should be simple and one-level.
• Small screens of mobile apps simply cannot display long menu item names without cutting them off. That is why all names should be short but understandable.
• Each menu item should be located under a corresponding category where it can be easily found by users.
• The search feature needs to provide users with relevant results, not just a set of random data.

Perhaps, usability is not as vital as, for example, security of applications. However, users may not even get to the security-related features if they simply don’t like how an app looks.

All in all, both mobile testing[1] and website testing cannot go without full-fledged usability testing[2].

Related Posts:

• 10 Basic Usability Testing Principles[3]
• How to Make Usability Testing More Effective?[4]
• GUI Testing vs Usability Testing[5]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2016/04/27/checking-usability-principles/

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