Usability and accessibility

You want your users to have a seamless experience when browsing through the application. It should be so smooth that even the users don't notice that they can find things without any difficulties. You can do this by making your application highly usable. User research and testing are an essential aspect when it comes to defining usability that can satisfy user experience.

Usability is how quickly the user can learn navigation logic when using your application for the first time. It's about how quickly they can bounce back if they make a mistake and are able to perform the task efficiently. Complex and feature-rich applications have no meaning if they can't be used effectively.

Often, when you are designing your application, you want to target a global audience or significant geographic region. Your user base should be diverse in terms of technical amenities and physical abilities. You want your application to be accessible to everyone, regardless of whether a user has a slow internet-connection or old devices, or they have physical limitations.

Accessibility is about inclusion and making your application usable by everyone. While designing an application, a solution architect needs to make sure it can be accessed over a slow internet and is compatible with a diverse set of devices. Sometimes, they may have to create a different version of the application altogether to achieve that.

Accessibility design should include design components such as voice recognition and voice-based navigation, screen magnifiers, and reading content aloud. Localization helps the application become available in a language that's specific to a region, for example, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Hindi, or Japanese.

As shown in the following diagram, customer satisfaction is a component in both usability and accessibility:

You must know your users to achieve usability and accessibility, where accessibility is a component of usability, and they both go hand in hand. Before starting the solution design process, a solution architect should work alongside a product owner to research users by conducting interviews, and surveys, and gathering feedback on the mock frontend design. You need to understand the user's limitations and empower them with supporting features during application development.

When the product is launched, the team should plan for A/B testing by routing a small portion of user traffic to new features and understanding user reactions. After launch, the application must have a mechanism to collect continuous feedback (by providing a feedback form or by launching customer support) to make the design better.