Prioritizing Web Usability

Chapter 4. Prioritizing Your Usability Problems

• How Severe Is the Problem?

125 What Makes Problems Severe

• Scoring Severity

• Hospital Usability: In Critical Condition

129 The Scale of Misery

• Tip: The First Law of E-Commerce

132 Why Users Fail

• Five Biggest Causes of User Failure

134 Is It Enough to Focus on the Worst Problems?

Usability can be a matter of life and death. In war a soldier in a fighter plane has a critical edge if his plane’s user interface for targeting and firing systems is just one second faster than his enemy’s. On the Web, of course, usability does not have such a dramatic role. But it can determine whether your Web site fails or succeeds.

How do you know which usability problems have the most serious consequences for ...