Focusing on the usability and ease of reading

Recently. I was driving past a gas station next to the highway, one that I had passed by earlier and this time saw a new board announcing some new eating options. Given the speed at which I was driving, I would normally be able to read the signs on the board, but the lettering was in a fancy script where I was not able to read it (or rather, it would have taken more time to read it than the time I had while driving past it). I asked the other people in the car whether they were able to read the names of the outlets that were on the sign, and none of them were able to read in the short duration of time that we had while passing by. This was not true of other signboards that were in plain simple script, not some fancy script.

While reliving this experience, my experience in an IT industry came to the fore, all the discussions with the usability experience and the discussions with the usability expert came to the front. If the gas station signboard was written after consulting with an experience expert, then they would have realized the use case and had the sign board written in a way that people could read it while passing by and maybe be attracted enough to stop by before they passed the place. 

And this is what usability is all about. While doing the design of any new user screens or even when looking at the redesign of an existing screen or user facing UI, or anything similar, it is always important to look at how this will look at the users. When the design is being done by the people behind the development and testing team along with the product manager, it is necessary that it be consulted with a usability expert. It is important to emphasize this point because there have been so many cases where the people that have been working on the product for so long feel that they know what the customer wants and will resist what a usability expert emphasizes on (there are specific examples I know where the usability expert has recommended changes in the workflow or the screen, and the development team has not been able to appreciate the changes or are very resistant to these changes).

One way to make sure that the development team understand the need for usability is to get the team members looking at user forums or defects logged by customers, as well as getting them to actively looking at beta programs and interacting with the users - this can get them to quickly change their perspective of what is important for the product.