My wife and I built a new home this summer and are still in the midst of getting it organized. One of our biggest challenges is dealing with the fact that we no longer have a basement — in North Carolina, apparently this is quite common; we come from Minnesota, where it’s mandatory. Anyway, I’ve been on a recent “usability in the home” kick as we’ve optimized the locations of our belongings based on our own internal usability study.

Usability for the morning routine
Subconciously, I had been doing this all along, but never really stopped to think about how usability could be applied to the home. For example, our master bedroom has a master bedroom closet, but you must walk through the master bathroom to access the closet. In our old house, this was not the case, so we had hanging clothes in the closet and folded clothes in the dresser in the master bedroom. Getting ready in the mornings was a fairly quick task. With our new place, there’s a lot of walking back and forth, and all 3 (closet, bathroom, and bedroom) are considerably larger than in our previous home. I was finding myself zig-zagging back and forth from the closet, through the bathroom, and to the bedroom every morning when getting ready for the day. Normally, I am not particularly astute in the mornings, so it has taken me a few months to finally realize what I was doing. Because we had previously had a different layout, we gave no additional thought to where our clothes would be positioned in our bedroom and closet. I’m now optimizing the layout by attempting to put all of my clothes in our master bedroom closet to eliminate the back-and-forth trips that waste time.

Usability in the kitchen
Another example is our kitchen. We’ve been working on the best way to organize pots, pans, dishes, glasses, utensils, etc. based on workflow in the kitchen and commonly used items. Glasses are above the dishwasher and fortunately, our dishwasher and glass-holding cabinets are at the end of the counter in the kitchen — makes for very good usability. It’s quick and easy to access, and since more of these typically fit in the dishwasher than anything else, unloading the dishwasher directly into the cabinet above is also quick and easy.

Usability in the garage
Yet another example is our garage…a man’s haven. I enjoy working on our cars, so I have many, many tools and liquids (oil, transmission fluid, cleaning products, etc.) to keep organized. I have yet built a work bench yet because I’m still evaluating if I can buy a modular workbench system (like this, or this), or if I am in need of a custom-built work bench. I have however gotten most of the clutter off the floor by using Rubbermaid FastTrack organization kits. Much like a business, I am evaluating my three options based on time, money, and the value it adds. My rollaway toolbox has been organized for several years now, and it’s interesting to see how my interpretation of organizing my toolbox is compared to friends who also have their own vast array of tools. A good friend of mine who spent a considerable amount of his time helping me work on my vehicles would always joke about how my toolbox was setup poorly compared to his. I guess a usability study is in order. I’m really waiting to pull the trigger on a work bench after I get some more of my own usability studying in with the current garage setup/layout.

Usability for…lawn mowing?
Lastly…and out of fear that I’ll get laughed at if I mention how else usability is being applied in our household, is that lovely task of mowing the lawn. At our previous house, our lawn was big enough to require a riding mower. The riding mower alone transformed the chore from a 2-hour pushmower nightmare to a 45-minute dream. I regret to say that I did not spend enough time figuring out the best mowing routes for my lawn in the shortest amount of time — I had thought the rider solved all of my problems, after all, it provided a 62.5% reduction in time. Relating this back to web usability, I think this is quite a common mistake with web marketers. A significant improvement is great, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your job is done. You have to constantly monitor progress and determine through testing and analysis if more optimization can be done. At our new place, we have a much smaller yard and only require a push (self-propelled) mower. So far, I have concluded that mowing the lawn perpendicular to the street is the quicker method (as opposed to mowing parallel or diagonal to the street). I need to figure out alternate paths so the grass doesn’t grow in one direction from me mowing in the same direction all the time.

Optimize your site for your customer’s primary tasks in doing business with your company
Again, mowing can be related to website usability. Mowing is a chore, it is something that I enjoy doing because I take pride in the appearance of our yard, but I would definitely rather be doing about 1,000,000 other things than mowing. For this reason, I need to minimize the time spent on this task to maximize my time elsewhere as well as maintaining my own sanity — nobody really wants to mow all the time. On websites, consumers often feel the same way. They may use your site as a tool to get certain tasks done, are not interested in Web 2.0 features, social media, bells and whistles, unless these features help them get their task done more efficiently. They may not be there for an emotional experience, they are there to perform tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is a balancing act many companies play when they sell products online and also provide support and account management of the products online as well (think online banks, cell phone companies, etc.).

Build, launch, test, optimize, re-launch, test. Repeat.
Furthermore, I think web marketers get caught up in the hype at times and are so focused on trying to architect information and cram as much data online as possible that they lose site of the task at hand — making it easy. A lot of this is trial and error, A/B testing, etc. And most importantly, your job is never complete! Building, launching, and forgetting about it is a bad habit to get into. Just because you have a website, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anyone any favors. You may be doing a disservice to your customers if you do not analyze how they use your site — they could be wasting valuable time working with your site and can very easily switch to a competitor that has their kitchen properly organized, knows where their clothes need to be in the morning, and knows the best lawn-mowing path for their yard. You never know until you do the research and get in the mentality of always improving what you offer.