Best Practices in Web Evaluation Mark A. Greenfield

Mark Greenfield Higher ed web professional, consultant, keynote speaker, futurist, uwebd overlord, lacrosse coach, tennis player, music lover, dog rescuer, volleyball dad markgr.com twitter.com/markgr delicious.com/markgr

The Entire Site Matters

the.edu lifecycle

Why do you have a website?

1.Too busy 2.Consensus on what makes a good website Challenges

Time Management Matrix I Not Important Important Urgent Not Urgent II IIIIV Crisis Pressing problems Deadline-driven projects, meetings, preparations Preparation Prevention Planning Values clarification Relationship building Needless interruptions Unnecessary reports Unimportant phone calls, meetings, mail Many popular activities Trivia, busywork Time wasters Some phone calls, mail “Escape activities”

Time Management Matrix I Not Important Important II IIIIV % 15% % 2 - 3% Urgent Not Urgent

Time Management Matrix I Not Important Important II IIIIV % 25 – 30% % 15% 50 – 60% Less than 1% 2 – 3% Urgent Not Urgent

What makes a good website?

HiPPO HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion

what a site looks like is NOT the only thing that matters

What makes a good website?

The lens through which you view the world Paradigms

Know what you don’t know

What makes a good website? What do students think?

Form over Function

Facts vs. Feelings

Photos or Words?

Evaluation Methodologies

How many of you evaluate your website based on Analytics

Web Analytics Know your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) Analytics should be an ongoing process Focus on trends Be wary of the macro view

When is a redesign that results in a decrease of 500,000 page views a good thing?

How many of you evaluate your website based on The User Experience

“Most senior administrators understand usabilty about as well as they understand the average air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.” - John Rhodes

We need more people with UX expertise

UCD Methodologies Affinity DiagramsBenchmarking Brainstorming Card SortingCognitive Walkthrough Contextual Inquiry Expert EvaluationEye Tracking Field Study Five Second TestsFocus Group Functionality Matrix Heat MapsHeuristic Evaluation Interview Journey Maps Mental Models Personas SurveysTask Analysis Usability Tests

UCD Methodologies Affinity DiagramsBenchmarking Brainstorming Card SortingCognitive Walkthrough Contextual Inquiry Expert EvaluationEye Tracking Field Study Five Second TestsFocus Group Functionality Matrix Heat MapsHeuristic Evaluation Interview Journey Maps Mental Models Personas SurveysTask Analysis Usability Tests

Usability Tests

Wisdom from Steve Krug Testing one user is 100% better than testing none The best kept secret of usability testing is that it doesn’t matter much who you test (recruit loosely and grade on a curve) Think about the implications of “domain knowledge” Focus on scenarios, not tasks

analytics can tell you what people are doing but not why

Focus Groups / Usability Tests / Surveys Focus groups are good for understanding attitudes and perceptions Focus groups are not a good way to get usability information. Focus groups are numerically impossible to generalize to a larger population so they can’t replace surveys. What people say they do and what they actually do are often very, very different

Heuristic Evaluation A usability evaluation method in which an expert performs a systematic inspection of a web site based on a set of design principles (commonly referred to as heuristics)

Task Flow Analysis Task flow analysis critiques what a user is required to do in terms of actions and/or cognitive processes to complete a task on a web site.

Taskonomy instead of Taxonomy

How many of you evaluate your website based on Speed

The Need for Speed #marks911

Response Times 0.1 secondThe limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously. 1 secondThe limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. 10 secondsThe limit for keeping the user's attention.

People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second)

delicious.com/markgr/speed

How many of you evaluate your website based on The Quality of the Code

How many of you evaluate your website based on Credibility

How many of you evaluate your website based on Security

How many of you evaluate your website based on Uptime

How many of you evaluate your website on A variety of devices and platforms

How many of you evaluate your website on Accessibility

mark greenfield makayla greenfield What 3 rd Graders Can Teach Us About Web Accessibility

We are all temporarily-abled - Rachael Scdoris

How many of you evaluate your website based on The efficiency of your web operations

the.edu lifecycle

Concluding Thoughts

Measure both the product and the process

How good is good enough?

All evaluation efforts must be actionable

Evaluation should be iterative and ongoing

Thank You mark a greenfield markgr.com twitter.com/markgr delicious.com/markgr