Usability in the Lab: Techniques for Creating Usable Products

Abstract

Laboratory automation and instrumentation vendors frequently claim usability among their long lists of features and benefits—but can they justify that claim? What makes a product usable and how do you design for usability? This article outlines an approach used to create usable products in other application areas, such as eCommerce and medical device development, and suggests that a similar approach could provide benefits for users and developers alike in the field of laboratory automation. The user-centered design process is summarized, together with a set of usability heuristics that can be applied during the design process and used to evaluate usability during development.