Usability vs. Userbility

I know, I know. "Didn't you spell it wrong?" I acutally did mean to spell it userbility. I was going to explain it then I found this blog that said it well:

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Userbility

I know what you're thinking: It's "usability," you schmuck. Right you are. But let me try to explain where I'm coming from.

Usability is the idea that software or website features should be designed with the user in mind. Don't make blind assumptions about how your users will interact with your product. Inform your design decisions with data based on user testing of a variety of sorts.

The most important part of this idea, of course, is determining who your users are. Based on a number of types of information and research, you must try to come up with a user type, or possibly one primary and one secondary user type. From there, you create personas, sort of a character sketch of your user. This becomes the building block of your usability process - you keep these personas in mind when developing initial design ideas, and when recruiting the kind of people you want to test those designs.

Here's where I came up with the cutesy term "userbility" - this persona, this building block, will prove invaluable not only for user-focused product design, but for other crucial areas of your company as well. Your target user should be the basis not only for how to design your new feature, but for which new feature to introduce in the first place. For how to position your features into product offerings. For how to market those products - everything from package design to ad placement.

Just as in the regular concept of usability, this sample user or users cannot be the sole determinant of these decisions. But they must play a central part in the conversation. A successful company must always keep the user in mind, and this is best accomplished by top management's embracing a well-defined user persona and emphasizing the need for all team members to focus on that persona when making decisions. That's userbility.

What other specific aspects of a company that could benefit from a well-defined, personalized user persona?

found at: http://userbility.blogspot.com/2005/12/userbility.html