{"id":333,"date":"2006-03-03T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=333"},"modified":"2006-03-03T01:00:24","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T09:00:24","slug":"it%e2%80%99s-all-about-the-user-%e2%80%93-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s all about the user \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">How do you define the usability of an HR technology?\u00a0 Most people who have been through the RFP (request for proposal) process have felt the pain of selecting software based on functionality alone.\u00a0 We all want to have an application that does 100% of what we need it to do.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we often forget to understand the usability component of application design.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to hypothesize that the probability of successful technology change hinges on usability rather than functionality.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">What\u2019s functionality?\u00a0 Basically it\u2019s simply the ability of an application to accommodate data fields and processes.\u00a0 If you need a learning system, functionality includes the training course data fields as well as the enrollment processes into those courses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">What\u2019s usability?\u00a0 It\u2019s the ability of an application to absorb \u201cclick fatigue\u201d and present a user interface that is simple and intuitive to use.\u00a0 Rather than making a user navigate between layers and layers of hierarchical menus, a person should be able to get to their destination in as few as two mouse clicks.\u00a0 The metaphor to click fatigue would be the automated phone system of your credit card company and having to enter 50 combinations of data before getting to talk to an operator.\u00a0 User interface is slightly different.\u00a0 One way to limit click fatigue is to place lots of data on a single screen.\u00a0 The problem with this is the user is so inundated with data that the screen becomes overwhelming and difficult to use.\u00a0 Usability generally is increased by navigation to reasonably sized summary screens with links from that screen into other related areas of functionality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Why is usability more important than functionality?\u00a0 I\u2019m definitely not saying that functionality takes second spot.\u00a0 However, poorly designed UI will dismantle the best constructed functionality \u2013 if people can\u2019t figure out how to use the system, they won\u2019t.\u00a0 Usability carries to all levels, the core application, manager and employee self service.\u00a0 Possibly the most critical areas are in self service.\u00a0 Practitioners and administrators have to use the system.\u00a0 However, managers and employees almost always have a way out \u2013 they can revert back to paper forms or call the HR service center.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Next time you\u2019re looking at a system, make sure that you\u2019re scoring the usability while you\u2019re scoring the functionality.\u00a0 What you can do with the application is NOT more important than ensuring high levels of adoption in the user population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">In part 2, I compare the usability of point solutions to ERP solutions<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you define the usability of an HR technology?\u00a0 Most people who have been through the RFP (request for proposal) process have felt the pain of selecting software based on functionality alone.\u00a0 We all want to have an application&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hr-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}