game, game. repeat.

A Usability Scale

Many usability professionals focus on, well, usability. But there’s more to usability than an intuitive interface. The best stuff in our lives are pleasant, fun, even habit forming.

The Scott Bonds Usability Scale

1. Unusable. Not useful or usable in any sense.
2. Functional. Very useful, but requires instruction (manual, training, demo, etc) before a desired feature is understood.
3. Usable. Intuitive, requires little instruction before the user is proficient.
4. Pleasant. Using it is satisfying and enjoyable.
5. Fun. Use it for its own sake, possibly independent of its core ‘function’.
6. Addictive. So fun its difficulty to give up its regular use.

Products that achieve scores above a 2, beyond ‘mere’ usability (which is itself tremendously hard to achieve), tend to enjoy more success than their competition. There are some other usability scales available as well as good advice about how to gather feedback to assess where your project lands on this scale.