Usability and taste  Taste is subjective  but not necessarily trivial  Taste is subject to fashion  Changes over time  Influenced by other people  What people are accustomed to or expect at any given time  What people think reflects competence, skill at any given time

Usability assessment is like editing  Someone who looks at design (text) through the eyes of the user (reader)  Helping the design (text) do (say) what it is trying to do (say)  Encouraging the designer (author) to let go of favorite ideas that don’t help  Streamlining, tightening, clarifying for the sake of usability (comprehensibility)

Usability inspection  Different methods have different goals  They vary as to have judgment is derived and the criteria  Defining characteristic: reliance on judgment (rather than more elaborate testing)

Inspection methods  Heuristic evaluation  Guidelines review  Consistency inspections  Standards inspections  Features inspection  Cognitive walk-throughs  Pluralistic walk-throughs

Components of a walk- thru  One or more task scenarios  Explicit assumptions about the user population and contexts of use  Sequence of actions a user is likely to perform to complete the task  Prototype of some sort

Cognitive Walkthrough  Taking a systematic look at any product with an eye on ease of learning by inspection.  Using prototypes, task flows, and scenarios:  Walk in your users' shoes through your Web site  Try out parts of the design, following a task flow or scenario  Look for problems

Pluralistic walk-through  Involves several different groups, typically:  Users  Product developers  Usability experts  They walk through a scenario using a prototype

Benefits and limits  Short and fairly simple  Allows developers to hear the concerns of users with the system directly, early enough to do some good  Questions of validity given the constrained setting and tasks  Scenarios don’t readily reflect the full gamut of possible uses and users

Competitive usability study  Purpose: gather insights from related sites  Look for both problems and good ideas  Understand the context within which users will be working  Other choices  What they are used to  What is salient for users: whatever was sacrificed often becomes important in the next round  Caution: easy to focus on trivia

How to do competitor study  Usability inspection by developers or usability specialists  Usability testing by users  With directed tasks  With their own tasks

Selecting sites for competitive usability study  Sites that have good reputations  Sites that have interesting features or designs  The market leaders  Sites your users may be familiar with  Sites that have bad reputations, for mistakes to avoid  Sites that are considered cutting-edge  Ask users!

What to look for  Targeted users  The user goals, tasks this site supports  Content, functionality, navigation, design  Things a site does well  Why and how?  Things it does poorly  Why and how?  Ideas to adopt  Things to avoid

IBM’s guidelines for rating competitors’ sites  Is the purpose of the site clear?  Does the site clearly address a particular audience?  Is the site useful and relevant to its audience?  Is the site interesting and engaging?  Does the site enable users to accomplish all the tasks they need or want to accomplish?  Can these tasks be accomplished easily?  Is info organized in a way users will expect and understand?  Is the most important information easiest to find?  Is textual info clear, grammatically correct, and easy to read?  Do you have a clear idea of what the site contains?  Do you always know where you are, how to get where you want to go?  Is the presentation attractive?  Do pages load quickly enough?

Competitive Evaluation: Information Schools  Sites    To whom are these sites addressed?  What is your first impression of the school?  As a prospective student, what is your reaction? Masters? PhD?  As an employer?  As an alumni?  Walk thru the process of (1) investigating to see if you want to apply, and (2) applying

Conclusions  Content and functionality are paramount; other factors of usability are secondary.  Different users have different needs; for whom is this site optimized?  For new users in particular, the combination of content, functionality, design, and navigation create an overall impression of the organization and the site.  The initial impression may determine whether users are willing to go further when they have a choice.  In an inspection, it’s hard to get past initial, surface impressions.  With further user testing or use, other kinds of usability issues and criteria become important.  Guidelines and heuristics can help us to understand how and why a site does or does not work, but they are means to an end.