Web Usability

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The Purpose of this Website

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Introduction

Our goal is to have a website that is helpful when designing and developing the user interface of other websites and web apps. We have targeted three distinct audience groups:

  • Those who are website design and development professionals,
  • Those who are web usability and user experience professionals, and
  • Those who are creating their own websites, including bloggers.

These are the primary, secondary and tertiary audiences for this website. The first step in creating the user interface for any website or mobile application is to clearly, and distinctly, identify the target audiences. The better you understand the characteristics of your website or web application users, the better will be your user interface decisions.

We began by trying to identify all of the usability sources currently available on the web that may be useful to user interface developers. This included findingall of the most useful usability tools, identifying the top-selling books on website usability, identifying the sources of good usability research, and finding other information related to the overall user-computer environment.

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Conducting a Set of Usability Tests: The Final (Pre-Launch) Tests

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There were certain design decisions on both wireframes that led to better performance, and we used the best from both wireframes to produce a final wireframe.  The final wireframe then was used as the basis for developing a graphic prototype.  The graphic prototype, with images, colors, and a variety of type fonts for headers, was used for the final pre-launch usability test.

The participants were a mixture of federal and non-federal employees.  The majority of participants included the primary audience for this site, which were healthcare providers, public health professionals and consumers.  Again, these tests were conducted using Bailey’s Usability Testing Environment (UTE).

The pre-launch usability tests were divided into two parts: a pilot test and the final test.  The pilot test was conducted on Monday using 18 participants and 56 task scenarios that were divided into three categories: 24 FirstClick from the homepage, 24 FirstClick from one of the new second-level pages, and 9 ‘homepage to the actual content page’ (all clicks).  All participants saw all scenarios in one-hour in-person testing sessions.  [Read more…]

Conducting a Set of Usability Tests: Wireframing and ‘FirstClick’ Testing

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Once the problems were better understood, and several solutions had been proposed, we created several competing wireframes to see which would best elicit the success levels we were seeking.  All of these eventually were combined into three homepage wireframes (A, B, and C).  After only one test, B was eliminated and the final two wireframes (A and C) were tested ‘head-to-head’.A vs C Wireframes

We had 65 participants attempt to complete 136 scenarios (68 using Wireframe A and 68 using Wireframe C).  Each participant spent about one hour completing the scenarios using Wireframe A and then Wireframe C, or Wireframe C then Wireframe A. [Read more…]

Conducting a Set of Usability Tests: The Baseline Test

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The original Baseline Test was used to establish the human performance and user satisfaction levels for the existing site.  We also used the baseline test to help us understand some of the major usability issues that would help to guide future changes to the new homepage. This was consistent with our usability and user-centered design approach.

The Baseline tests took place in August 2006 at three different locations in the United States (Washington DC; Atlanta, Georgia; Ogden, Utah). All were in-person usability tests, and were conducted in government usability labs.  Because of the type of data we were collecting, we elected not to use remote usability testing.

The participants were both federal employees and people who had no affiliation with the government.  We tested a total of 68 participants that included: [Read more…]

Conducting a Set of Usability Tests: Setting-Up for the Tests

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A few years ago (2007), while consulting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they elected to revise and update their website, CDC.gov.  One of their primary goals during this redesign process was to optimize the usability of the homepage, and some of the second-level and third-level pages.

We organized a six-person user experience team[1], and created a plan to ensure that major, meaningful usability-related activities would be appropriately carried out.  Over a six-month period, we conducted the following major usability activities:

  • Conducting a review of past usability studies on the current CDC.gov site
  • Interviewing users, stakeholders, partners, and web staff
  • Conducting detailed analyses of web, search and call logs
  • Analyzing the user survey data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index
  • Surveying the ideas and attitudes of CDC leadership, employees and web staff
  • Conducting a card-sort activity
  • Conducting parallel design sessions
  • Producing a series of wireframes
  • Creating graphically-oriented prototypes
  • Conducting several usability test and evaluation activities

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Senator Reid’s Assumptions about Americans Use of the Internet

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Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to explain the Obama administration’s latest decision to extend another ObamaCare deadline by saying that people who want to sign-up just “are not educated on how to use the Internet.” In other words, I assume that he means that most American adults do not use the Internet much.

From an Internet usability perspective, Senator Reid’s assumptions (not surprisingly) seem to be a bit naïve. This is clear when we consider the results of a 2013 Internet use study conducted by the Pew Research Center involving 2,252 United States adults.

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Online Questions Related to ‘User Experience’ or ‘UX’

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The most common questions on the Internet about user interface issues are the following in order of search frequency: [keywordeye.com/]

  1.  What is UI?
  2.  What is UX design?
  3.  What is a user interface?
  4.  What is a UX designer?
  5.  What is UI design?
  6.  What is user experience?
  7.  What is usability?
  8.  What is usability testing?
  9.  What is user experience design?
  10. What is a UI designer?
  11. What is user interface design?
  12. What is interface design?
  13. What is web usability?

We combined those related to ‘user experience’ together, and then provided the best answers given by the top three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). The following four questions were related to the ‘user experience’.

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Online Questions Related to ‘Usability’

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The most common questions on the Internet about user interface issues are the following in order of search frequency: [keywordeye.com/]

  1. What is UI?
  2. What is UX design?
  3. What is a user interface?
  4. What is a UX designer?
  5. What is UI design?
  6. What is user experience?
  7. What is usability?
  8.  What is usability testing?
  9.  What is user experience design?
  10. What is a UI designer?
  11. What is user interface design?
  12. What is interface design?
  13. What is web usability?

We combined those related to ‘usability’ together, and then provided the best answers given by the top three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo).  The following three questions were related to ‘usability’. [Read more…]

Do We Have ‘Gender Neutral’ Websites?

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We reviewed the research to better understand the major characteristics of website developers. These developers are the main (primary) audience for the webusability.com website. One good study was reported by ‘A List Apart’ in September 2012[1].

They conducted a survey of over 15,000 developers (worldwide) with the goal of finding out more information about the people who create websites.

Some of their results are shown below: [Read more…]

Online Questions Related to ‘User Interface’ or “UI’

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The most common questions on the Internet about user interface issues are the following in order of search frequency: [keywordeye.com/]

  1.  What is UI?
  2.  What is UX design?
  3.  What is a user interface?
  4.  What is a UX designer?
  5.  What is UI design?
  6.  What is user experience?
  7.  What is usability?
  8.  What is usability testing?
  9.  What is user experience design?
  10.  What is a UI designer?
  11. What is user interface design?
  12. What is interface design?
  13. What is web usability?

We combined those related to ‘user interface’ together, and then provided the best answers given by the top three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). The following five questions were related to the ‘user interface’. [Read more…]

Use Crowdsourcing to Identify Popular Usability Tools

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It would be very helpful for all web developers to know which usability tools were most popular. Ideally, we would all know which user interface design tools were used by successful website developers and usability professionals. There are so many new tools now available (at least 300), that it would be difficult to do detailed evaluations of them all.

One way to ascertain a tool’s popularity is to see how many are using the product’s website. We assumed that the more people accessing a tool’s website, the more that were using that product. In other words, the better the rankings, the more popular the product. This is a form of ‘crowdsourcing’.

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36 Usability and UX Tools for Creating Prototypes, Mockups and Wireframes

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‘Prototyping’ refers to the activity of creating early, quick and usually incomplete versions of a website or web application. A prototype (also known as a wireframe or mockup) can range from being very crude to being highly interactive, and allows the developer to explore a variety of ideas before taking the time to implement them. One of the main benefits of prototyping is to obtain early feedback from potential users, and from other members of the design team.

The process of prototyping usually begins after first identifying a basic set of requirements. However, in some situations the prototype itself can be used to help identify requirements. As you obtain more information about the proposed website or web application (usually through interviews, evaluations and testing) the prototype will be changed and improved.

We divided all of the tools into three categories:

  • Web Only
  • Mobile Only
  • Web and Mobile

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Books on Usability: An Early History

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In 1982, I published my first book through Prentice-Hall on computer usability, Human Performance Engineering: A Guide for System Designers.  At that time, there were no other books that directly addressed the steps necessary to optimize computer system usability. In fact, Bell Laboratories (AT&T’s Bell Labs), where I was working at the time, sponsored the research and development of the book. It took me one year to write the book, and another year to defend it (and re-write different sections) as it was reviewed by over 100 research psychologists, computer programmers (UNIX, C and C++) and usability experts within Bell Laboratories.

The second edition of Human Performance Engineering was published in 1989, and the third and final edition in 1996. The book was used at major universities throughout the world for well over 20 years, and still sells a few copies on Amazon even now — over 30 years later.

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100 Usability and UX Testing Tools

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We conducted an exhaustive review of software tools on the Web created for conducting usability tests and/or usability evaluations. We found over 100 tools.

As it relates to usability testing, the terms ‘test’ and ‘evaluation’ have very different meanings. When conducting a test, you can collect considerable objective data; but when conducting an evaluation, you are usually limited to collecting a limited amount of subjective or ‘softer’ observational data. The ‘tests’ provide an opportunity to make changes, then to retest, and then to statistically determine if reliable improvements actually have occurred. The ‘evaluations’ can assist you in identifying possible weaknesses in a site, but are less helpful in providing an objective way to statistically measure any improvements once changes are made.

To make it convenient for you to find the tool in which you are most interested, we developed a way to filter and sort all the tools.

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Usability Testing: An Early History

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It is interesting to note how usability testing methods have evolved over the years. In July of 1970 at Bell Laboratories (AT&T’s Bell Labs) in Piscataway, New Jersey, we began conducting usability tests on new business information systems. These were legacy AT&T office systems that were being converted from being purely manual systems to becoming computer-based systems.

In these tests, participants completed task scenarios while using a keyboard and viewing a CRT screen (we were not yet using a mouse). Our first tests were conducted in rented hotel rooms, but we soon migrated to using on-site conference rooms. Finally, in early 1972 we moved into a new 11-story office building where we constructed our own usability lab on the top floor – complete with a one-way mirror, and an overhead camera.

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FirstClick Usability Testing

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In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) elected to revise and update their website (CDC.gov). One of their primary goals during this redesign process was to optimize the usability of the homepage, as well as some of the second-level pages. As part of this usability testing process, Cari Wolfson and I conducted a series of usability tests – one of these was the first FirstClick usability test. A more detailed account of this testing program can be found in a later blog posting, and is also found as Case Study 10.3 in Tom Tullis’ and Bill Albert’s book, Measuring the User Experience (2008).

We studied the factors contributing most to each person’s success on a task. By looking at click streams and success rates, we found an interesting relationship between the user’s success in making their first click and their eventual success with the entire task.

[Read more…]