Web Usability A simple illustration

Example: WebVoyage Timeout Utility Lets an opac user know how much time is remaining in session (bottom bar) A pop-up enables user to restart timer and/or session Created by Jim Robinson, Tarrant County College Consists of JavaScript apps & a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Open source, therefore configurable

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Lots of web usability advice out there Just one of many, many, many, books…

Usability Guidelines 1 (for this exercise) Krug’s first law of usability: “Don’t make me think!” Close contender to first law: “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” Fact of life #1: “We don’t read pages. We scan them.” 1.From Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” 2 nd Edition

Guidelines #2 1 Keep your texts short Users scan text and pick out keywords... 1.From Jakob Nielsen’s “Designing Web Usability”

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Usability Guidelines 1 (for this exercise) Krug’s first law of usability: “Don’t make me think!” Close contender to first law: “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” Fact of life #1: “We don’t read pages. We scan them.” 1.From Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” 2 nd Edition

Web usability - applied 22 words 6 words Which button should I click? “Don’t make me think!” One (self explanatory) choice Button text Aesthetics 1.Removed table border 2.Even spacing “We don’t read pages, we scan them.” "Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left."

Web usability - applied 22 words 4 words Which button should I click? “Don’t make me think!” One (self explanatory) choice

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