Many of our clients have a set of legacy applications which have been used for years without much change. Most organizations today are migrating such applications onto new technology platforms. The focus tends to be on providing cutting edge technology and piling up the features list.

- What happens to the end users in this setup? Here are people who are used to certain applications, their interaction patterns have been set for some time. They have apprehensions about adjusting to the new applications, the comfort factor is gone.

Can usability help? Yes, it can make a significant difference.

In any migration exercise, it is critical to have the users at the core and then design the new application. Adopting a user-centric design process ensures that the users’ expectations are well understood, mapped and eventually met. A good starting point is to study the various user profiles and the tasks they perform on the existing application.

Usability analysts can help gauge the users’ mental model, the way in which they interact with the applications and map their needs to the new functionalities. These are crucial inputs to the design phase and will eventually help in developing better, more ‘usable’ applications, which score high on user acceptance.