Interview with Gul Amir Khan

"Slowly, organisations in Asia are comng around to the importance of usability. Now its time to push the boundaries of usability and go to the next level."

What exactly is usability?
Contrary to what most people think, usability is not about being user friendly. Usability is about factoring in user behaviour and human factors into the product design. Making a product user friendly is easy but making it usable is challenging. You can't just learn it by reading a few books.

Why do you fell that usable products should be persuasive and motivational as well?
Let's say you're selling your products and services online and you decide to make it usable. Excellent, you're on the right path. Typically, online transactions will go up as a result of a well executed usability process. But am I persuaded that your service is useful to me? It's important that usable products are persuasive and motivational as well.

How does persuasive design go beyond usability?
Persuasive design is about encouraging another step further and really raises the bar for user interface design. We're concerned with designing a system that makes people more driven and motivated. You may have a fantastic intranet or website but are the people using it working efficiently or are they just going through the motions?

If you're selling insurance online, do your users think "it won't happen to me so I'm not motivated to buy this insurance?" How can your insurance website act like a salesman to dispel those psychological barriers that your users may have? To really shine, any kind of usability work should include persuasive and motivational techniques as well.

Gul Amir Khan Chief Usability Director President of the Usability Professional's Association (Singapore Chapter). Gul has conducted usability workshops and consulting for virtually all the ministries and statutory boards in Singapore. He's been featured on FocusAsia, ChannelNewAsia.com, and NewsRadio 93.8 'The Living Room'. He has been a user experience keynote speaker for numerous seminars, such as the PSi Conference co-organized by MOF and iDA as well as the 'See Face2Face with Gul Amir Khan' by PR Academy of the Ministry of Information, Communication & the Arts (MITA). He is currently doing motivational UI research and testing by drawing on research done in safety psychology, learning theory, marketing psychology, and motivation theory and self-instruction techniques.