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Why is usability and the user experience important?
If you tailor your interactive product to the real needs of its users, your products will be more successful. Users will achieve the goals more easily and feel more satisfied with your product. They will use your product more and become loyal to it, and your brand.
Saving time and money
The user-centred design process, for creating usable products, is actually more efficient that traditional development methodologies. User-centred design projects finish on time and on budget more of the time. Products will also incur lower training, support and maintenance costs.
The most successful corporations making electronic products employ user-centred design techniques as a matter of course. Companies like Microsoft, Palm, Apple, Amazon, Ericsson, FT.com and BBC News all know that UCD is essential to their success.
Clearer understanding of your goals
You know exactly what you're making because you've storyboarded and prototyped it. So your team can get on and make the product without going down blind alleys or misunderstanding their objectives. Designers and programmers work much more productively when they have a clear understanding of what they are creating. User-centred design doesn't slow down projects – it speeds them up by removing confusion and pitfalls at an early stage.
Reduce the need for a revamp after product launch
Your product won’t need a major revamp after launch. Many electronic products need to be changed dramatically after launch because users complain about them once they start using them. If you gather usability and feedback as you move through the development process, you can fix problems when it’s cheap (before coding), not when it's expensive, and launch a product that makes more users happy first time.
Reduce your customer service and support costs
Usable products have lower customer service costs. If people find your product hard to use, they will call or e-mail the customer service department more frequently. Running a bigger department costs your company more money.
Reduce training costs
Usable products have lower training costs and improve productivity. If you're making a system for in-house use, you'll need to spend less on training if the system is easy to learn. If it's easy to use, users become productive more quickly and remain more productive thereafter.
Increase revenue
Usable products increase revenue. People need products that enable them to get useful results quickly and easily. Provide this kind of service and you'll see increased customer success rates which will lead to increased satisfaction as well as increased traffic or sales.
Increase customer loyalty
Usable products promote brand loyalty. In tests, Flow has found that users become less favourable towards brands whose products proved hard to use. Sites which users find easy to use quickly gain a loyal user base.