Usability – designing for people

Sometimes you really can let usability take a back seat in the design process. Some people might be surprised to hear me say this, but for certain types of web site, usability really isn’t so important.

If a site has no utility, or users do not have a specific goal in mind when they visit, the chances are that site is just a bit of a playground, a mere experience in its own right. If users get confused, give up and bail out, it’s no loss. They haven’t failed to achieve anything because they didn’t need to.

This is the kind of site which is all about concept and aesthetics – call it a piece of electronic art, a visual joy ride. Try to make it great to use, by all means, but let the creativity flow.

I fitted a programmable room thermostat about a week after my central heating system was upgraded. The installer replaced the existing old-fashioned analogue bi-metallic strip type roomstat, with a new one of the same design vintage, despite me requesting something a bit more up to date.

I find it remarkable that it’s still normal practice to control a central heating system with a crude 19th century device like this.

Digital/programmable thermostats offer a great deal more control over your heating than a traditional timer/roomstat combination. You can set different temperatures for different times of day and days of the week.

The drawback with old-style roomstats is that you can only set one temperature and when you don’t want your house heated to that temperature, you have to use the boiler’s timer to switch the whole thing off. So it’s ‘off’ or one temperature. Pretty crude.

A programmable roomstat does the whole job – set your existing CH timer to ‘on’ 24/7 and at times when you do want the heating off or low, just program the roomstat for a low temperature. If it gets really cold the heating will fire up, which is what it should be doing anyway.

It is more efficient to keep your CH ticking over at a low temperature, rather than let the house get really cold, giving the heating system a lot of work to do hauling the temperature up from a cold state. Using an old-style timer means that ‘off’ really will be off, even if your pipes start freezing.

Programmable roomstats allow you to keep your house at a suitable temperature at all times, they improve energy efficiency, are cheap and simple to install; in most cases you can just replace the old roomstat with no other modifications required. It’s a no brainer.