Usability

From Grokdoc

Usability

Usability involves those features of a computer Distribution, Operating system, or Application that make it easy or difficult for a User to accomplish the User tasks that the user wants to do.

Note that a truly usable Program or Knowlege base will be designed so that different classes of user will all find it easy to use.

The Newbie should find that it "just works" via "obvious steps" from the time that the user gets a vague idea that there might be a program somewhere that would help do what he or she wants to do, via the time when the user has a list of candidate programs, the time when the user is looking for the features of a program that might help, the time when the user wants to know how to use a specific feature to accomplish the task, to the time the user clicks a button or a menu command to do the task. Ideally, the Newbie should find all the steps after browsing or searching LQWiki:Hierarchical TOC to be obvious. That is the goal we should aim for.

The same principle holds for Advanced and Expert users. Everyone is new at some aspects of Linux, and should be able to follow the same path to a solution. However, advanced and expert users have additional needs: the ability to take shortcuts through the documentation and the program to bypass what they already know and zero in quickly on the task at hand. These users must be addressed as well, and the Newbie must be able to easily learn the short cuts needed to become expert.