Usability now!

[j4]

So, the boss's son is temping for us.

"Usability? Is that even a word?"
"Yes."
"What, really?"
"Yes, really."
"[pause] What does it mean?"
"How you use things."
"Huh? That's 'usefulness'."
"No, that's whether something's useful to you or not. Usability is about how people use things, how they interact with applications, systems, and so on."
"Huh?"
"Look, Google for 'usability'. I'm not making it up, really."
"Nah, I'll defer to your professional judgement."
"No, really, why don't you Google for it. You'll see that I'm not making it up, and you might find out a bit more about it, if you're interested. And if you're not interested, well, never mind."

[tappity-tappity]

"Gosh, it is actually a real thing, isn't it?"

Comments

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

In order to try and explain things like this, I usually try to communicate the concept of how easy something is to use. It'll do something useful, but is everything in sensible places and not hidden or misleading or ignored because you're distracted by something else, principle of least surprise, that sort of thing.

It glosses over the finer (and important) details, but I usually find it helps people distinguish between function and, I guess, ease-of-use as a sort of metonym for all the concepts you describe.

[j4.livejournal.com]

That's a good explanation. To be honest I think I was too annoyed by his "it must be made up if I haven't heard of it, but I don't want to lift a finger to find out about it" attitude to try for a proper explanation. My bad, I know, but I am in a bad mood. :-/

I was also surprised that a moderately tech-savvy English student a) hadn't heard the word at all, and b) wasn't interested in a new word. New word! Shiny! ... Is that just me?

Oh, and you don't really smell. :-)