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Usability Toolkit

Why usability?
Usability is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the ease, effectiveness, and satisfaction of interactions between people and things. It is an inherent attribute of all such interactions, and the foundation of human centered design. Yet we seldom notice usability unless 1) a thing doesn't work as anticipated, or 2) a thing works better than anticipated.

Usability is too complex a topic to fully address on this site, but I'd like to suggest a few basics. If you would like a deeper understanding, a great place to start is Donald A. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things.

Some usability basics for Instructional Designers
Drawing on research from a multitude of disciplines, instructional designers devise strategy frameworks that facilitate learning. Successful strategies are specific to the audience and learning goal, and have verifiable results. Certain elements common to all good strategies include:

Context: Context opens the lesson with an explanation of the purpose and goals for a learning activity and usually frames the activity in a Situation Model.

• What will we be doing?
• Why will we be doing it?
• Where will it lead us?
  

Example: [context] We've been working hard on fractions and percentages all week. [what and why] Now we're going to consider how fractions can help us solve problems. [where] When we are through, we will understand how fractions and percentages are useful and necessary tools for everyday life. [activity] Let's imagine that we are going to buy a goldfish for our classroom...

Analogy, example, illustration: It is important to provide adequate analogy, example and/or illustration for each new concept presented. This practice assists learners in connecting new information to their individual Mental Models, and supports different learning styles.

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