When should I start thinking about usability?

It's never too early to begin thinking about usability.

By including usability at the beginning of the project, you are more likely to identify usability issues at an early stage when it is still easy to make changes, whereas, usability problems found later in the development lifecycle are usually much more time-consuming and expensive to fix.

top of page

What are the benefits of including usability early?

Forty years of software engineering experience has shown that it's much cheaper to change a product early in the development process than it is to make changes later in the process.

Here are some estimates:

• Fixing a usability problem in the development stage costs 10 times more than if the problem were fixed in the design stage.
• The same problem fixed after release would cost 100 times more than if fixed in the design stage.

top of page

How do I include usability?

The ideal situation is one where you follow the user-centered design process. To learn more about user-centered design, see: What is User-Centered Design?

You may also choose to follow the steps in the Step-by-Step Usability Guide:

• Plan
• Analyze
• Design
• Test & Refine

The Guides provide an overview of the user-centered design process. You might want to review the visual overview of all the steps so that you can quickly jump to any step in the process.

top of page