But the companies that are most successful at designing usable products are those in which everyone actually thinks differently. In our most recent web-site studies, we watched users look for information within web sites. Our goal was to gather data about what makes a good link, but we did not tell users whether or not they should use the site's search facilities. Users went to these search engines in almost half the tasks. Maybe they shouldn't have.
Some wizards work really well, and others confuse users more than they help.
Here are some guidelines to help you figure out when to develop one, and the traits we found that make one wizard better than another. Market Maturity Users' expectations of a product depend on the maturity of its market. By identifying what stage your product is in now, you can anticipate some of the pitfalls that lie ahead. We recently conducted a research study to find out what makes a web site usable. Here are the results from our early research.