Usability / User-Friendly

Does anyone else ever get annoyed at these terms? Don't get me wrong, the idea behind these terms is correct. Make stuff easy to use. When looking in the physical world many things are easy to use and/or easy to figure out. By easy to figure out I mean within 10 minutes you already know the object pretty well. Recently I was looking over a proposal for a client and was surprised at how many times usability terms showed up.

If you can not get the basics of a program in a short amount of time the interface between the computer and human has become harder and more frustrating. Which is the main reason programs are developed. To allow for humans to use computers. I don't care if it is a web-service, a background process, a desktop application or a website they all exist to allow for people to leverage the power of computers.

More coders need to focus on what will make the application easiest to use for the majority of its users. If it is something that network administrators will be using then figure out what would make their life easy, if it's single moms then what type of interface/interaction would make their life easy ( granted being a mom would be tough no matter what).

Next time you are working with an application think about ways to make your primary user's life easier and your application will look like a gem compared to many out there.