Usability helps, but by itself it is not enough. It focuses on the interface and not the customer, and is often used to justify poor designs that suit everyone and no-one. Customers don’t live in usability labs.

Long , long ago in 1984, a rather clever man called Don Norman wrote a book entitled 'User-Centered System Design'. This was a very important book as it threatened to turn 'systems design' upside down by saying that the user should be considered first and that the tech should serve the user, not the other way round. Over the years, and with the influence of Jakob Neilsen, this grand vision got significantly degraded and became the rather more limited 'usability' we see today.

Customers don’t live in usability labs

We like Don Norman's view, that systems should be built around the user and the customer, and that the focus should be that the tech serves the customer and the business. But we do also like usability and usability labs - one on one interviews - but they need, like everything else, to be put in context. They should be a comfortable not a scientific environment, they should allow customers free rein to go where they would go in real life, This is about customers, not about the fine detail of boxes and buttons - thats just hygiene.