BC Museums Association Conference 2005: Website Usability Workshop
Definition of 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 get frustrated easy
- Frustrated users leave websites
- shopping cart example
- In 2001, the Yankee Group, an America research firm found that shoppers left $140 billion US unpaid in online shopping carts. These shoppers found what they wanted to buy, but never followed through with their purchase. 29% of those surveyed said they left the shopping cart unpaid because the site was too difficult to navigate. That's $46 billion US lost in one single year to poor usability. (yankeegroup.com)
- 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.
- 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
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
- Again, make it obvious what is clickable - watch the underlining
- 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
- Persistent navigation - where do I go and ...
- Site ID - where am I
- Orphaned pages
- The Beauty of Tabs
- They are self-evident
- They're hard to miss
- They're slick
- They suggest a physical space
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
How do people read on the screen?
- Top to bottom of content
- left to right
- Scroll to the bottom
- Only after failing to find info
- Side menu
- Top menu
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
Other tips on creating Internet friendly documents
- Break long content in small nuggets
- Make really long documents available as a PDF with a summary and a link
- Scan for links - make the links in your text meaningful
- Make visited and unvisited links contrast with the base font colour
- Be aware of red-grey and blue-green colour blindness
- Use the language of your users - who is the targeted audience
- Stay away from ambiguous text
Easy Usability Testing
The No-people Focus Group
Compare
- find a site more or less equivalent to yours (maybe a museum but can also be a commercial site)
- How is their usability - good or bad? Why
- What can you learn from the site
- Do you find their site difficult to navigate? Come up with some questions - information you want to find and see how difficult it is to find it on the site
Walkthrough Your Own Site
- Imagine your site as if you were a visitor
- Construct a typical scenario for your website (ie, you are a senior looking for ticket information and the latest shows)
- Walk through your site as if you were the senior
- Make a list of problems you run across - think of how a user would handle these problems - how much time would they put into solving them before leaving the site
The Trunk Test (thanks Don't Make Me Think)
- Pick a page on your site and answer the following questions
- What site is this? (Site ID)
- What page am I on? (Page Name)
- What are the major sections on this site? (Sections)
- What are my options at this level? (Local Navigation)
- Where am I in the scheme of things? (You are here indicators)
- How can I search?
The Pizza Focus Group
Before You Begin
- Come up with a list of specified tasks you would like each participant to perform
- Make sure to phrase the tasks in a non-leading way
- BAD: Please search for the set of 6 tea crumpet spoons (visitor may jump to search button instinctively)
- GOOD: If you wanted to find a set of 6 tea crumpet spoons, what would you do?
Think Aloud
- Ask your participants to go through the specified tasks you set out
- Ask them to provide a running commentary on their thoughts as they perform the tasks - this will allow you a glimpse into their thought process as they perform the actions
- Encourage often
- HINT - have the participant start in Google and see how (and if) they can find your site
http://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
http://www.crmuseum.ca/
Sample 1
Sample 2
