How to measure your product’s usability using the E5s “Ease of Use” Framework
Measuring usability and defining success metrics will be unique for every product. We can use some design framework to guide us to frame the review. You have probably heard of “Ease of Use” as another way to measure usability. However, this term tends to feel oversimplified since it provides less actionable guidance for designers. Instead, we can expand it to 5 Es; Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error Tolerant, and Easy to Learn.
How might we translate the 5Es measurements to tangible metrics? We need to realize there is no universal “one-size-fits-all” definition because what constitutes ‘ease of use’ in a Human Resources management app might be different from an entertainment-streaming platform.
In Natuno, we believe that great product design needs to tap into tangible success metrics. So in this article, I’d like to dive-in on how each of the measurements in the 5Es framework can be translated in a real context.
1. Effective
I think one of the most ambiguous terms for me, in the beginning, is identifying the difference between effective and efficient.
Eventually, I came to understand that effectiveness focuses more on whether the user successfully completed the task or not while being efficient focuses on how the successful tasks are achieved.
Aside from measuring effectiveness by looking at whether the user’s goals were met successfully, we need to also measure whether all work is correct. One of the ways to do this is by assessing its critical and non-critical error.
The critical error happens when a user fails to complete the task they need to perform using the app. While the non-critical error is the slips users may encounter along the way when they are on the path to success.
Here are examples of metrics found in certain platforms:
- The user is able to successfully complete the registration in under 3 minutes”
- Less than 5% of total customers perform booking errors that require follow-up contact from the staff.
2. Efficient
If efficiency, we focus on how the users manage to complete the tasks or not. This can be measured by the total ‘time or speed on task’, or keystrokes required.
To facilitate this, we can use design components such as a navigation menu that might help users navigate to what they’re looking for better. For example, in a knowledge management platform, the addition of snippets of information will also assist users in getting their way through the platform without going back and forth.
Here are examples of metrics found in certain platforms:
- The users find the insurance registration app to be faster and easier to go through and would pick this method instead 0f filling in a paper form offline which can take hours to finish.
3. Engaging
This phase is probably the less obvious one, that is how the interface becomes engaging to use. The engaging part of a product can be acknowledged through obvious forms like the visual interface or graphics. In contrast, elements that are more subtle to identify can come in the form of motion design or information chunking.
Motion design can play a role in showing progress and movement, while information chunking can make it easier for users to skim the information, hence gives delight and enables them to engage more with the platform.
The context “Engaging” is again different for each product. for SaaS that is used repetitively will be different from an e-commerce website that is used once in a while.
For example, in Google, they gave you an activity to play with dinosaurs while you are waiting for the page to load. In a news reading article example, you can give readers a “reading time estimation” component and a progress bar that helps users estimate how much longer they would need to finish the task.
Even though the hints can be subtle, that doesn’t mean that this metric is completely subjective. Here are examples of metrics found in certain platforms:
- At least 80% of customers express comfort by seeing the home venue before actually visiting the exhibition.
- Less than 10% of the readers dropped out from the article site in less than one minute because it improved their reading experience.
4. Error tolerant
In reality, errors are preventable. It is unlikely that a product is 100% error-free. Now the question changes; how do we apply some risk management strategy to the user experience itself?
The first step is to imagine all possible scenarios and design the error page as a part of the interface. Second, it is noted that designers can’t imagine all of the case scenarios where users can probably encounter errors.
Error tolerance is divided into two parts, error prevention, and recovery.
Here are a few principles for error preventions:
- Make it difficult to take incorrect actions.
This is the copywriter’s role to make sure we use distinct language with less technical jargon. Or even the user interface designer’s effort to design buttons to be distinguished from each other. - Make it difficult to take invalid actions.
For example, in data-entry forms, we can do this by giving examples of an ideal data entry. In a multiplication form, we can minimize the choices and present only appropriate navigational entries. - Make it difficult to take irreversible actions.
We should provide the ability to backtrack, such as undo or a history function to see whether we can go back to the previously defined state.
5. System errors in action
A system error is outside the control of the interface. So what we can do next is to facilitate how users can recover from these errors
Here are a few principles of error recovery.
- Calmly guide the user through the process of recovering from the problem
We can learn this lesson from flight attendants when they are facilitating passengers in unwanted situations. - Give accessible ways to prevent errors. For example, provide a button to reverse your action in an accessible location.
Examples of good error tolerance:
- Error prevention: The system will validate all housing, meal, and tutorial choices and allow the user to confirm pricing for these options before completing the registration.
- Error recovery: G-mail enables users to undo their sent messages for 5 seconds.
5. Easy to learn
This is how we minimize the complexity, or barrier of entry to use the product.
Sometimes when we talk about learning, we often jump to the conclusion that we can solve this problem by providing an onboarding page and tooltips.
While that can help, we need to ensure that the user interface can explain how it works by itself. We need to take into account that the products will ultimately scale, expand to other features, or even expand to different user bases, so it is worth designing a user interface that is self-explanatory.
We can use this by indulging in predictability. This can happen by using familiar interaction patterns, not introducing too many interaction patterns for similar functions.
Another method is making the support or help access easy to find. Provide controls where the user expects them to be.
Examples of good error management:
- Users will be able to successfully create a catalog in e-commerce without needing any external instruction or help screens.
While frameworks can help, the best way is to just put yourself out there. Hopefully, we can translate this framework according to your product context.
