Case Study - Applications

You can mail it in: Avery's usable label-making wizard

The Challenge

Avery, the leading manufacturer of mailing labels, faced an unusual business problem. Most of its customers used Microsoft Word, but Word offers only limited format options for printing labels. Also, Word's mail-merge function was extremely hard to use for creating labels. Avery decided that it needed to provide a better solution.

The Approach

HFI's experts began by interviewing a large number of Avery users. Most said they wanted a simple way to format labels, but didn't want to buy another program to do that. HFI decided that the best solution would be a wizard within Word. It designed the wizard to reduce the most commonly performed tasks to a few simple steps.

The Outcome

User testing of the product showed dramatic results. While most people found it hard to perform tasks with the native MS Word features, every user succeeded easily with the new wizard.

The wizard now ships with every copy of Microsoft Office in the Value Pack. Before Microsoft released it on CD, the wizard was available on the Avery Web site, and when it was first posted 30- to 40,000 users downloaded it every month. It also made PC Computing's list of the 100 best utilities.

Find out how HFI can improve your Web site or application.
Contact hfi@humanfactors.com or call 1-800-242-4480