It has matured from something that is 'done' to an application - typically after launch - into a design ethos that guides decision-making through specification, prototype, design and production. Most of the large organisations we deal with have brought some expertise in-house to ensure usability principles are instilled in everything they do.
However, these organisations also look for usability skills, or at least awareness, in the digital agencies they deal with, from design-and-build to SEO, and even media planning and buying. This has led to most digital agencies offering usability consulting, with varying degrees of success, but it has undoubtedly helped to popularise the discipline.
The wide range of agencies getting involved means that usability's remit is expanding, from the isolated environment of a site to the user's whole digital experience. This evolution relies on senior marketers understanding the benefits of usability, but at an event last September most of the marketing directors we spoke to hadn't heard of it.
Hand-in-hand with this, other disciplines are being brought under the 'usability' umbrella. Organisations are demanding quantitative data on behaviour to complement the qualitative data yielded by traditional usability work, such as lab testing and interviews. Technologies like web analytics and online surveys are increasingly being used, enabling usability improvements to be measured as they are implemented.
At Foviance, we've coined the term 'Experience Management' to describe the expanded discipline of usability, together with quantitative measurement, delivered through a model of continuous improvement. We believe this will increasingly be the model for usability. As sites improve, customers are becoming less tolerant of poor design, placing ever greater pressure on those same sites to continue to improve - fast.
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