Assignments - Week 2

Usability Research Scrapbook:

This blog is going to be my usability research scrapbook. I have only done one blog before this so hopefully I will not make too many mistakes. At least blogger seems pretty easy to use.

Market Research for Proposed Project:

I did ask this question in discussion but I'm still not sure. Are we to find a site we think has a usability problem and make suggestions for redesign after testing 3 similar sites? OR do we decide on a website we'd like to design and then find similar 3 sites to do usabilitytesting on? I don't know yet what I'll base my website on but I have started looking. So many choices! I'm still confused on the problem solving idea?

Usability Testing Video & Written Report:

Luckily I have a video camera, though I imagine I could do it with my web cam as well. I think
my friends are going to have to be my guinea pigs for this assignment. I will try and follow/adapt Krug's testing techniques and script. He makes it look easy, but I'm sure it's not.

Final Documentation:

I'll use Krug's "Don't make me think" to get ideas so I can get started on this assignment.

Research notes:

Krug (2006) has quite a lot of practical suggestions for successful site usablility. I''ll make notes of them here for quick review and a checklist to use. He suggests:

• A clear visual hierarchy
• the use of accepted web conventions
• each page should be clearly defined
• it should be obvious when something is 'clickable'
• include a search box on each page
• keep pages simple without much noise, not too busy
• use breadcrumbs (so that users can easily see where they are and how they got there). He suggests the greater than symbol > in between levels. For example Home > Subject > Category > This Page
• clear global navigation
• home buttons on every page
• importance of site ID - use logo and taglines
• distinct sections and utilities
• well thought page names
• likes use of tabs

Some additional things to watch for:

• low contrast text
• text that can't be resized or that can be and in so doing causes the content to disappear. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200711/common_usability_problems/
• differentiate between visited and unvisited links(Nielson, 2005) http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

Krug, S. (2006) Don’t Make Me Think, A common sense approach to Web Usability, Second Edition.
Berkeley: New Riders Publishing

Nielsen, J. (2008) Current Issues in Web Usability,
Retrieved March 10, 2008 from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/


Identify a problem:

So I need to create a questionnaire and distribute it to help identify the problems. Still looking for site theme to focus on.