Usable vs. Useworthy

Why don't more people use what you made?

The problem may be...
- they can't do what they want to do (usability)
- they're not interested in doing what you want them to do (useworthiness)

Something usable isn't necessarily useworthy.

Many of us turn to usability testing (and I'm proud that Meetup kicks ass in that Dept). A trap with usability can be focusing solely on making something usable without making it more useworthy. You can put people through a usability test, understand how they complete a directed task -- yet, not gain understanding about whether they would pursue that task to begin with.

If something is usable, it's able to be used. Very important.
If something is useworthy, it's worth being used. Also very important.

"Worthy" isn't a moral judgment or about prescribing whether people SHOULD use something. It's simply a question of whether they find worth in using something.

Unfortunately, we're often not trained to think that way. At the University of Iowa, I studied Human Factors Engineering, and we looked at how a cockpit is designed to be usable -- factoring how a human is designed, both cognitively ("How should a gauge with urgent information get the pilot's attention?") and physically ("How should knobs and dials operate to be used efficiently?"). Of course, we didn't ask IF there should be a cockpit or if those gauges, knobs, dials needed to be there. We just focused on how to make them most usable. We could presume they're useworthy. For most projects and products, however, don't presume useworthiness.

"Don't Make Me Think" is a great mantra (& book) about intuitiveness, but Don't Make Me Not Think Too Much... because, odds are, I won't think at all about your beautiful product or feature at all.

Usability questions:
- Are you able to use it?
- Is it easy to use?
- Can you use it to do what we want you to do with it?
- What gets in the way of making it better to use?
Useworthy questions:
- Is it worth using?
- How would you use it?
- Why would you use it?
- Why wouldn't you use it?

Everyone involved in every stage of developing and designing something should ask these questions.

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For more, see my "50 Reasons Why More People Aren't Using Your Website" (+51, 52)
Props to Mark Hurst and Seth Godin for shaping my thinking in this area through the years.
+ FYI: Meetup is now hiring a Head of UI