Born with Potential

Visual Usability

 

Following is painfully abridged version of BCMA session notes. See http://zeroonedesign.com/usability/

 

Usability refers to the ease with which a User Interface can be used by its intended audience to achieve defined goals. Usability incorporates many factors: design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and more. (sitepoint.com)

Why Does Usability Matter:

• Poorly designed systems are hard to use
• Users are frustrated easily
• Frustrated users leave websites

• The Canadian Heritage Information Network 2004 Survey on museum visitors:
• 21% of those visitors living in Canada and 27% of those living outside of Canada used the Internet in preparing for their visit to a museum.
• In other words, more than one in five visitors will check out your virtual site before they check out your brick and mortar site.
• The survey found that "there is a strong positive tie between visits to museums' web spaces and in-person visits to museums. The more one visits museum web spaces, the more likely one is to visit museums in person."

• CHIN survey
• 68% visited a museum website to find information on recent exhibits
• 63% visited to search museum collections
• 60% visited to find special events
• 56% visited to find directions
  

Source: The Candian Heritage Information Network 2004 Survey of Visitors to Museums' Web Space and Physical Space: Survey Documentation and Findings

 

Navigating the Website

 

Usability is about seeing the site from your visitor's perspective

Keep It Simple

• titles should be straightforward and should mean what you want them to mean
• buttons should be clickable and they should look like buttons
• people don't want to puzzle over things

Scan-o-rama

• When people read content on the web, they scan, they don't read
• Break pages into clearly definable areas
• Minimize noise - no movement, keep color choices to a minimum, tone down the exclamation points
• Make sure titles are prominent - big and bold
• Important information should be first on the page
• White space is your friend

Navigation

• People are usually trying to find something when they visit your site
• Navigation gives us something to hold onto in a site, it keeps us from getting lost

 

Writing for the Web

How do people read online?

• People who are looking for information online don't read, they SCAN
• Most people won't read instructions or click on HELP
• People read 25% slower on the screen

What to do if you really want your audience to read your content?

• Throw away 50% and then 50% again
• Provide a good headline and summary
• Provide link to more information or longer document
• Stick to Sans serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Verdana) - they are the most legible

How to create a website that is SCAN friendly?

• Create heading and subheadings
• Be consistent
• Use font and/or colour to offset headings
• Use background colours in table cells
• Organizing Content for Viewing
• In columns, not rows
• By category if appropriate