What is Learnability?
Learnability is how easily a new user can accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter a product. It is one of the five quality components of usability identified by Jakob Nielsen.
How it works
Learnability is measured by how quickly a new user can perform a task correctly, how many errors they make on first attempts, and how much of the interface they can use without help. It depends on consistency with platform conventions (do familiar patterns work as expected?), information scent (do labels suggest correct actions?), affordances (do interactive elements look interactive?), and progressive disclosure (is complexity revealed gradually?). Learnability sometimes trades off against efficiency for expert users: menus are more learnable than keyboard shortcuts, but shortcuts are faster once learned.
Applied example
A new project management tool is tested with 10 users who have never seen it. Eight can create a project within 2 minutes, but only 2 can figure out how to invite a team member. The invite function requires clicking a non-obvious icon in the header. This low learnability for a core task indicates a design problem.
Why it matters
Learnability determines first impressions and onboarding success, making it the most critical usability dimension for products that need to demonstrate value quickly before users decide to stay or leave.
