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Learnability and Simplicity

The aspect of learnability is defined as the system's support of the user's efforts to learn how a system or an application has to be used (Hampe-Nateler et al. 100). A system has to be self-explanatory and has to provide help. There are several ways to support a user in learning a system:

One way to support simplicity is to reduce the presentation of information to the minimum required to communicate adequately. For example, avoid wordy descriptions for command names or messages. Irrelevant or verbose phrases clutter your design, making it difficult for users to easily extract essential information. Another way to design a simple but useful interface is to use natural mappings and semantics. (Microsoft 8)

This principle will be further discussed in section 5 when dealing with interaction methods.

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