Our Approach
Usability is one of the most important principles when it comes to building a website. The Honeycomb model of usability created by Peter Morville is a perfect illustration of Bumbling Bees approach to web development. The key aspects of the Honeycomb are:
- Qualities: that shape the user experience [aka as facets of UX]: Useful: As practitioners, we can’t be content to paint within the lines drawn by managers. We must have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products and systems are useful, and to apply our deep knowledge of craft and medium to define innovative solutions that are more useful.
- Usable: Ease of use remains vital, and yet the interface-cantered methods and perspectives of human-computer interaction do not address all dimensions of web design. In short, usability is necessary but not sufficient.
- Desirable: Our quest for efficiency must be tempered by an appreciation for the power and value of image, identity, brand, and other elements of emotional design.
- Findable: We must strive to design navigable web sites and locatable objects, so users can find what they need.
- Accessible: Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web sites should be accessible to people with disabilities (more than 10% of the population). Today, it’s good business and the ethical thing to do. Eventually, it will become the law.
- Credible: Thanks to the Web Credibility Project, we’re beginning to understand the design elements that influence whether users trust and believe what we tell them.
- Valuable: Our sites must deliver value to our sponsors. For non-profits, the user experience must advance the mission. With for-profits, it must contribute to the bottom line and improve customer satisfaction.
The Honeycomb model of usability created by Peter Morville
Jul 20, 2010
