Learnability as a usability method

What is learnability?

According to the UsabilityFirst glossary, learnability is a measure of the degree to which a user interface design can be learned quickly and effectively. Learning time is the typical measure. User interface designs are usually easier to learn when they are familiar and designed to be easy to use based on core psychological properties. The learnability of an interface design can be, in turn, further broken down into five similar but distinct components: the aforementioned Familiarity, Consistency, Generalizability, Predictability, and Simplicity. When developing usability tests, it is important to keep the learnability of your user interface design in mind because a website or app that is easy to use will likely be used more often and more productively.

The five components of learnability

As mentioned above, there are five distinct components that comprise learnability.   It is essential to understand these constituents because they contribute to a user’s overall ability to learn a given interface design:

1.   Familiarity: Familiarity comes into play because users tend to expect certain things to happen.  This can include certain layout conventions, such as navigation schemes, color schemes or responses of an application.
2.    Consistency: Applications with a consistent interface design are easier to learn. This is especially important across various different parts of a software application, where changes of the interface design may confuse users or require them to adapt to yet another pattern.
3.    Generalizability: Generalizability means looking at other software applications that are similar to yours. The expectation of users is that tools which serve similar purposes include similar functions and respond to similar priciples. As users use many applications, generalizability helps them learn to operate an application without having to understand entirely new interface design concepts each time they encounter a new product.
4.    Predictability: Predictability means whatever tool you are developing, users of similar tools should be able to navigate your interface design with only the knowledge of using a similar tool in the past. That is to say that meeting user’s expectations improves learnability.
5.    Simplicity: Learning is fastest when there isn’t much to learn. Simplicity means keeping your interface design as lean and clean as possible for optimum learnability. Minimizing the amount of learning required by limiting the interface design’s complexity, improves learnability.