Ease Of Use

               Ease of use is the ease with which people of various backgrounds and qualifications can learn to use software products and apply them to solve problems.It also covers the ease of installation, operation and monitoring.The definition insists on the various levels of expertise of potential users. This requirement poses one of the major challenges to software designers preoccupied with ease of use.How to provide detailed guidance and explanations to novice users, without bothering expert users who just want to get right down to business.

               

one of the keys to ease of use is structural simplicity. A well designed system, built according to a clear, well thought out structure, will tend to be easier to learn and use than a messy one. The condition is not sufficient, of course but it helps considerably.This is one of the areas where the object-oriented method is particularly productive; many O-O techniques, which appear at first to address design and implementation, also yield powerful new interface ideas that help the end users.

              Software designers preoccupied with ease of use will also be well-advised to consider with some mistrust the precept most frequently quoted in the user interface literature, from an early article by Hansen know the user. The argument is that a good designer must make an effort to understand the system’s intended user community. This view ignores one of the features of successful systems: they always outgrow their initial audience.A system designed for a specific group will rely on assumptions that simply do not hold for a larger audience.

                  Good user interface designers follow a more prudent policy. They make as limited assumptions about their users as they can. When you design an interactive system, you may expect that users are members of the human race and that they can read, move a mouse, click a button, and type not much more. If the software addresses a specialized application area, you may perhaps assume that your users are familiar with its basic concepts But even that is risky.