This is kind of biased -- because my job is in part Usability. But I believe strong Usability is an absolute requirement of every aspect of life.
We have very little time on our hands these days. Your customers have very little time on their hands, and suprise, surprise...your employees have very little time on their hands. So why waste anyone's time on an interface that would be so easy to design more efficiently, or for that matter re-design. Is your design intuitive?
If you don't know, or if you're only guessing, you're missing out and by extension so are your users.
Usability work isn't just about moving things around - it's about streamlining, organizing, simplifying and remaining clear and concise to the user. It's about making everything more efficient. Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice Coyne had this to say in a recent article in CIO about investing in Usability:
"...Consider a customer service representative at a financial services company. Many times each day the representative opens the same few software screens to review customer accounts. Imagine that there is one design flaw that takes 10 seconds to overcome each time it appears. If this occurs even 25 times each day for 50 representatives, they'll waste more than 900 hours a year on this single usability issue alone. And research by noted usability expert Thomas Landauer at the University of Colorado shows that most software applications have at least 40 design flaws. At 10 seconds each, that translates to 36,250 hours wasted each year. But the flaws undoubtedly damage productivity even more severely than this example demonstrates, since people frequently waste more than 10 seconds when they encounter a usability issue. Beyond simply working around the flaw, you must also consider the recovery time users need to get back on track each time they lose their train of thought. The flaws' opportunity costs are also significant; the representatives' lost time could be better spent doing analysis or answering more calls. Your training budget is also part of the price of poor design..."
(Source: CIO Magazine http://www.cio.com/archive/021501/et_pundits.html)
I believe the effects even extend farther than Neilsen & Coyne would suggest. This is only one ripple in the pond. A happy/contented user is a more efficient user. Just look at the ease of use within a Blackberry, Apple or the original Handspring products. Their products are addictive to use. Nothing wrong with generating products that are so interesting and fun to use you crave using them -- and it's all about the basics of Usability. Saving Changes...
Oh sorry, let me add one more thing... there are bad usability consultants out there. The best thing you can do is take a look at before and after samples of their work. Do they make the interface easier or simpler? Do they refine it in any measurable way? Does the consultant address your issues with some common sense? Do they make an effort to understand the audiences involved? Do they think of things from all sides of the issue?
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."
