ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what ease-of-use metrics are and how we have used them to drive success across three cultures. It describes methods used in different corporate cultures to drive adoption of user-centred design. Ease-of-use metrics measure how easy or difficult a product is to use. Ease-of-use metrics is a simple and effective technique that generated dozens of examples of successes, ranging from decreased customer support costs, to increased revenue, to user experience job generation during a period of layoffs. There are many potential metrics that can be used to measure ease-of-use for a product or solution. By setting ease-of-use goals, user-centred design (UCD) teams create a situation to lead to success. An user-centred product team worked with fully bought into ease-of-use goals and persisted on tough usability problems until they were successful. When their initial redesigns failed to meet the ease-of-use goals, the user experience team went back to the proverbial drawing board and developed several other possible interfaces.
