Usabilty means living up to users’ expectations
In any given situation, whether online or off, we all form models of how things are supposed to work based on our understanding of the objects we are manipulating. When our mental conceptual model differs from the system model, we misunderstand how to use the object or system and become confused.
For example, when we come across a button on a web page, we expect it to visibly react and provide immediate feedback by either depressing or illuminating. If we don’t get a reaction from the button as expected, we might assume it’s inactive – or broken – and we pause for a moment to double check our mental model.
A “usable” website or application is one that lives up to the user’s mental model of how it should work. It should be obvious how controls, navigation, forms and content all work together. It should feel natural. When visiting a site for the first time, we as users establish a mental model for how it should work – what the buttons should do, how the navigation should function and so on. When those components of the site differ from our expectations, we are left with a poor user experience, and the website fails.
Understanding user expectations is not only essential to effective website design, it’s a prerequisite for evolving the interactive experience.
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