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Improving Website Usability

Improving Website Usability. What is usability?. A measure of the quality of interaction between a person and a system. Good usability means: Easy to learn Efficient to use Easy to remember Error tolerant Subjectively pleasing. Why is usability important?. Low usability results in:

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Improving Website Usability

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  1. Improving Website Usability

  2. What is usability? • A measure of the quality of interaction between a person and a system. • Good usability means: • Easy to learn • Efficient to use • Easy to remember • Error tolerant • Subjectively pleasing

  3. Why is usability important? • Low usability results in: • Frustrated users • Visitors leaving • Reduction in repeat visits • Higher support costs • Decreased productivity

  4. How can I improve usability? • Many methods are available: • Take a user-centered approach: • Who are your users? • What are they trying to do? • Create prototypes (drafts) • Perform usability testing • Follow usability guidelines

  5. Who are your users? • User Similarities: • Task-oriented • Impatient • Reluctant to learn • Scan instead of read • Reading level: 8th grade

  6. Who are your users? • User Differences: • Computer skills • Type computer • Type of software • Motor skills • Vision

  7. What are they trying to do? • Task-oriented: identify user tasks • Questions to ask yourself: • What tasks does my content support? • Is there a better way to support that task? • What other tasks relate to this content? • 311 Citizen Contact Center

  8. Thinking Like Your Users • As an exercise, let’s take a user-centered approach and analyze a page on cabq.gov • Identify User Characteristics: • Age • Web Experience • Type of Computer • Vision • Motor Skills • Transportation • Identify User Task

  9. Thinking Like Your Users • What action will the user try to perform? • Support actions that users want to perform. • Will the user find the correct control? • Make controls visible and ‘clickable’. • Label controls accurately. • After performing the action, will the user know they did the right thing? • Provide clear feedback.

  10. Usability Testing • Watch real users as they attempt to perform typical tasks while “thinking out loud”. • Be cautious of user feedback: • Before they use your site/page • While looking at your site/page • After using your site/page • Redesign and test again • Make sure you fixed the problems and didn’t add new ones

  11. Number of Users • 3-5 are best: • Will find 70-80% of usability problems • 1 user is not enough: • Will only find 25% of usability problems • Likely to produce unique results that can’t be generalized

  12. Follow Usability Guidelines • Do not use popup windows • Do not require users to remember information from page to page • Support printing • Tables • Make line-by-line reading sensible • Summarize • Avoid using for layout

  13. Links • Use Consistent Clickability Cues • Colored text (blue) • Underlined text • Graphic + text • Write meaningful labels • Users should be able to sense the link’s destination from its label. • Link labels should match the names of their destination pages. • Link labels should be clearly different from each other. • Links embedded in text should be highly descriptive (9-10 words) and make sense when read out of context. Users ignore surrounding text.

  14. Scrolling • Eliminate horizontal scrolling • Avoid scroll stoppers • Use appropriate page lengths: • Short pages for ‘homepage’, navigation, scanning • Longer pages for reading continuous content • Stay within 4 screenfuls • Use a clickable list of contents on long pages

  15. Images • Use images that add value • Use thumbnails to preview large images • Place large images ‘below the fold’ • Label images to help users understand them.

  16. More Information on Usability • cabq.gov/standardsWeb Room Training and Education • UseIt.comWeekly columns on web usability by Jakob Nielsen • WebPagesThatSuck.comCountless examples of bad web design • Usability.govResearch-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

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