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.