Rating Software Goods

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Normally, when rating a piece of software, I think numbers.  How many features?  How fast?  Kitchen sink?  It's starting to dawn on me that this thinking is what leads to abominations that Visual Basic is so well known for - forms with countless features.  Quickly wired up - frais-du-jour!

So my thinking is starting to shift towards: how can we quantify the usability of a user interface?  Looking at the runaway success of the iPhone's UI - there must have a way to assign a metric?

In the physical world, we'd call it the quality of the product.  Something made of cheap parts is expected to die sooner than something made of quality parts designed to last.  It's common sense - in a sense.

How do we build a UI?  Maybe the construction will lead to the quality questions.  Hmm, Windows Forms, drag a few text boxes, connect it to an Access database - and voila - instant abomination!

Wait, a quality UI....  That requires thought.

Recently, my thinking is that a good UI is like a good book.  A good book does not need a manual to read - in and of itself consists of the manual.  Some books are technical in nature demanding a certain background - just like certain software demands more knowledge of their users.

A good book does not confuse the reader by overloading them with information.  Neither does a good UI.

A good book will have information that is easily accessed.  So does a good UI.

A good book will have a consistent writing style.  So will a UI be consistent.

A good book requires a lot of forethought and consideration as to how all the chapters will flow.  A good UI, I'd argue, requires just as much thought.  Blindly throwing text boxes is the equivalent of a rough draft of a book where ideas are present without any links or structure.

For example, a good book will usually try to use a person's intuition into a given matter before burdening the person with the technical aspects.  Therefore, once the technical aspects are presented, the reader just needs to learn terminology as the concept already makes sense.  UIs generally miss the boat in this regard.  And that's a challenge to resolve...

Note:  I'm aware of the click count as a metric in web pages.  But I'm inclined to say that UI design trumps click count.  And good UIs don't require that much effort on the user (the comment is circular on purpose).
</rant>