Learnability in UX and how it makes wonders with the users

Published in

UX Collective

7 min readApr 10, 2019

While there are lots of opinions about easily learnable, what the term intuitive truly means is “single-trial learning.”

It was another day at work and it was exciting for me that day because our UX team was getting two new user experience interns. Being the Sr UX Designer on the team it’s one of my responsibilities to help the new interns with onboarding, talk about our UX team, the strategy, the processes.

It’s always different because of the wonderful questions they come up with during the discussions. I was thinking of the topic I need to talk to the interns that day and was struggling to find a good example. It was lunchtime and me along with the new two interns head out to the pantry to get some food. I already had my lunch packed that morning and wanted to heat it in the oven nearby. That was the moment when it struck me about the topic I wanted to talk to them. Learnability.

As I was talking to the interns, I paused and asked: “ What is one of the products which you felt was very difficult to use?”. No one had ever asked that question to them and it’s obvious, because most of the times, when we come across a bad design, all we do is swear at the product, struggle to understand it and by the time we get used to it, we forget how worse the product was to use in the earlier stages.

So, the interns replied with names of few products and apps which they felt were very hard for them to use and pretty quickly everyone of us engaged in a quality discussion. That’s when I started to talk to them about Learnability in User Experience.

What is Learnability?

Learnability is the ease with which a software application or product can be picked up and understood by users. The better the learnability of an application, the less training and time it will take for a person to use it.

Here is a good example:

The Bad: Parking Signs in Los Angeles

Parking signs in Los Angeles (LA) have been the epitome of information overload for decades. They’ve always been notoriously hard to understand, because the traffic rules are complex, resulting in the need to convey a lot of information in a small area. Look at the example below:

Imagine you are a driver along this road on a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. Can you park at this spot? What sounds like a simple question takes a lot of mental processing to answer.

As designers, we’re often faced with situations where we have to design for a lot of information to be displayed in a small space. The parking signs in LA might be an extreme case, but many times designing for mobile apps means facing the same problems. Is there a way out — for both the parking signs and designers in general?

Designing a sign to display all the information, while being easy to understand, sounds like an impossible task. But that’s exactly what Brooklyn designer Nikki Sylianteng did.

Author/Copyright holder: Nikki Sylianteng. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Nikki’s proposed parking sign was eventually used in LA as part of a trial run.

Part of why Nikki’s design1 works well is that it is user-centered: Nikki realized drivers simply want to know whether they can park at a spot. Yes or no — that’s all drivers needed, and that’s all the parking sign shows.

Her design also made use of visuals, rather than text, to convey information. The result is incredibly intuitive: green for OK, red for No Parking. It’s even designed for the color blind, with stripes for No Parking.

Now when you look at the sign, you’ll know that on Tuesday at 9 a.m., parking is not allowed. The bars show what’s what at a glance — simple.

This is one of the simplest examples of learnability. Though this might feel simple, this could be one of the differentiators of why people should use your product when compared to your competitors. If they don’t understand it, it’s easier for them to quit and try a new one.

Digital devices and products are getting too complex and hard to understand

Similar is the case with appliances in our daily life. These are supposed to make our daily lives easier and help us perform actions quickly. Instead, they are being designed in such a way that it takes a while for the average user to learn how to use them

It is proven by data and a recent research study shows that many users usually prefer devices and products which are not limited to the mobile phones and digital cameras, products that are more easier to use and understand.

Here is a design of a TV remote: 43 Buttons !!! Are you kidding me?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-508949/Gadgets-Why-complicated-electronic-devices-driving-mad.html

Though there are many useful buttons, there are tons which appear to be unnecessary and confusing.

Also users don’t try to learn first — instead, they typically try to do what they want to do, and explore the interface to see if they can figure out how to do it. This practice is usually called learning by doing, and it means that the user is starting out with a goal already in mind; they are more interested in achieving that goal than in learning the user interface (so any learning that happens will be secondary); and the burden is on the user interface to clearly communicate how to use it and help the user achieve their first goal at the same time.

Why Learnability Matters

People usually engage and interact more with a product or device after they understand how to use it. Similarly, they bounce away from products which just are horribly convoluted.

As designers, everyone wants to design for learnability so that the users of that product engage and stick around. The important goal is to help them understand your interface as quickly as possible so that they can use it.

Interaction design should be learnable, or at least shouldn’t require the designer to teach people how to use the interface. This always doesn’t work. Take an example of complex software like Photoshop. But websites are not complex software.

For instance, everyone knows Amazon’s website. It’s loaded with thousands of categories and tons of products. With so much content, one would expect Amazon to be a mess.

Yet the experience on Amazon really isn’t too hard. Why? Because the design was focused around relevant components which help users to make sense of the interface quickly.

So, How to achieve Learnability in your design?

Users need evidence that what they’ve done (clicked, submitted a form, entered content) actually had an effect on the page. You can do this with simple animation effects or by creating page elements that respond to users. One great example is the signup form on MailChimp’s registration page.

The mappings of a system are the relationships between moving a control (digitally) and how it results in the real world. Similarly, natural mapping refers to a system’s physical design and its relationship to it. The ease of conventional mappings depends on the prior use of similar systems.
Use Affordances. Affordances are the properties of an object or interface that show how it can be used based on prior knowledge.

An ideal system helps the user complete their task without Help & Documentation. However, it does need to be available and easily accessible for the user to find just in case.
Consistency makes a product feel cohesive. Inconsistencies can make the product feel broken, disjointed or confusing, and can distract the user from completed their ask.

Conclusion

Every product which is designed should have high-quality heuristics. Designers should be intentional to utilize systems they knew users are already familiar with. This self-explanatory learnability contributes to the ease and frequent use of products/devices.