Is your app or website easy to “learn” from the outset? As in, does it effortlessly guide the user further along? Are menu options and calls to action clearly defined and inviting? Is the user’s personal attachment to the experience visible in some way (even if that means clear access to a profile or personal history)? These are the more general questions you can ask based on how effective a service like Duolingo is at providing a good customer experience.

To evaluate Usability of a wide variety of products and services, including hardware, software, mobile devices, websites and applications, System Usability Scale (SUS) has been used. Already established as an industry standard, SUS is referenced in thousands of articles and research papers.

In building the Website navigation and Information Architecture (IA), there are valuable advantages to using remote usability testing techniques like Tree testing and Card sorting. Tree testing evaluates the labelling of the (sub) categories - and that is why is is also called ‘Reverse card sort’. These remote tests can save a lot of costs in the Design budget because the preparation, exploration and optimisation of menus hierarchy and labels is fast and inexpensive.

“Design customer experience from the outside in“ was one of the five key lessons that helped to successful digital transformation initiatives. In order to succeed, besides the customers, all stakeholders need to be involved and their inputs built into the transformation.

In 2001, the term “Agile software development” was created - it referred to flexible and iterative software development. In the UX world, the term ‘Agile UX’ has taken the route of ‘Lean UX’. Both the terms have been used interchangeably at numerous workplace or coffee table conversations. Among members of the product team, ‘Agile’ is perceived being flexible and creating fast, building better collaboration among software and design professionals.

#1 In the consumer economy taste is not the criterion in the marketing of expensive soft drinks, usability is not the primary criterion in the marketing of home and office appliances. We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use.

-- Donald A. Norman

#2 "The most common user action on a Website is to flee.”

-- Edward Tufte, Information Design Guru