How Usability Claims can beat Technical Specifications

Part two our our three-part series on Strategic UX Design.

☞ Part one: CX, UX and Usability - A nested relationship

✎ By Rune Nørager, May 2020

Key takeaways:

– Have a balanced focus on technical claims and Usability claims

– Move your Usability claims from general and broad to precise and objective

— Ensure that your Usability claims are documented with data

The Business Case of Usability Claims

As end-users and customers, we are used to seeing technical specifications in marketing for products. For example, smartphone sellers will list technical specifications (e.g., the type and number of cameras, battery time, screen size and resolution) to get you to buy the newest models. Such specifications are precise and objective, which make them easy selling points by, e.g. showing how they compare to competitors.

In contrast, Usability claims (e.g. easy-to-use, intuitive) are seldom precise or data-driven, which makes it difficult to meaningfully market them as key product features.

However, since a product’s Usability is just as important for the overall Usefulness, using Usability claims is key to realising the full value of your product. To this end, this article shows you how to make Usability claims that are just as objective and precise as their technical counterparts. Furthermore, we show why having precise Usability claims may be more important than the technical specifications.

The Limits of Technical Specifications

In their essence, technical specifications describe and specify core technological and functional capabilities. In general, technical specifications can be divided into two categories:

1. Diversity and functional capabilities - “How much can a product do for me?”

2. Performance of the core technology - “How well can this product do these things for me?”
   

These specifications allow end-users and procurement departments to evaluate whether a product has the minimum requirements for performing the tasks at hand. Technical specifications are thus essential in determining whether a product is suitable for purchase at all, or whether something more advanced is needed.

However, the exponential advancement of technology has made it much easier for manufacturers to fulfil these basic technical needs. As a result, technical specifications have become less and less useful for comparing products. For example, while Android smartphones typically outperform iPhones in their technical specifications, users barely notice the difference in their interaction with the product.

Instead, the main differentiator becomes the User Experience, which is determined by the interaction between the technical specifications and the Usability of the product (see figure 1).

Examples of such interactions include:

• Improved product Usability leads to effective and efficient use, reduces errors and improve completion rate.

• Great product Usability allows product use under many situations, for instance under stress or in complex multi-task set-ups.

• Easy-to-use products reduce training burden for novel users.

The need for Usability features is further reflected in data, where ‘easy-to-use’ and ‘intuitive’ products are on top of the list of requirements for most stakeholders and end-users.

Despite this need, products seldom make precise Usability claims that make them stand out from their competitors. Instead, broad claims are made with little information about the concrete business value. What’s more, they are rarely backed by data (Wiklund et. al. 2017 - see references at the end of the article).

As a result, customers are left with no choice other than to use the technical specifications to differentiate - even if the differences are marginal.

Making Precise and Objective Usability Claims

To enable customers to make purchasing decisions based on Usability, Usability claims need to be just as precise and objective as their technical counterparts.

Most designers and product managers take time to list Usability requirements alongside technical and functional requirements at the beginning of any design design development process. However, these requirements can be rather general (e.g., a product should be useful, intuitive, user-friendly), which makes them hard to pursue as objectives for a design process. Instead, these high-level requirements should be converted into precise and operational Usability requirements that lend themselves to both verification and validation.

To convert high-level needs into precise Usability requirements, the exact user groups, tasks and conditions where the products will be used in need to be determined. Based on this, precise Usability claims can be defined.

For example, a company looking to launch a new medical device for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), could look to claim that their product enables an ICU nurse, that has three months of prior experience with a similar product, to:

• Carry out the basic daily workflows using the new device.

• Complete tasks with the device without making any user errors.

• Achieve the same result in less time than using a competitor's devices.

• Operate the device without receiving any additional training.

These Usability claims help hospital procurement departments clearly understand how the Usability qualities of the medical device convert into economic benefits as a result of lower total cost of ownership. The manufacturing company can thus show how they outperform their competitors through Usability claims - even if they are identical in terms of technical specifications.

But which Usability claims should you strive for? To help you get started, here is a list of Usability claims that might be considered as candidates for your next product development project:

• More effective and efficient use: errors, time to completion, completion rate.

• More likely to use more than just the primary functions e.g., users are more confident and adventurous.

• More use situations can be covered - for instance, stressful situations where a complex product would not be suitable.

• More application areas.

• More user types, e.g. different skill-levels or educational background.

• Easier to resume normal use after a period of not using the product.

Not all of these claims might apply to your business case, but they can serve as a starting point to get you to think about how to differentiate products through precise Usability claims.

Another way to get started with making precise Usability claims, is to extend your user insights activities, e.g. using Usability tests, to have an explicit focus on Usability-based user needs. Doing such tests is furthermore necessary for getting the data you need to back up your claims and make them objective. However, Usability needs are often more subtle and, therefore, more difficult to observe. This is because they are often harder for users to verbalise than shortcomings in technical features and functionality. To address this, we have developed a toolbox based on psychological research methods. We look forward to talking more about these tools in future posts.

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