Web Site Usability Handbook

Does your web site convey your message effectively? Are your customers finding what they need easily? Determining these factors is a difficult task that has challenged Usability professionals since the first web page was posted. Company web sites aren?t optional in today?s highly competitive business environment and ensuring that your investment on the web is well spent, is a challenge facing all levels of web professionals. With the hands-on guidance and examples provided in this book, readers will find practical tools to make certain that their site is as effective and user-friendly as possible. They?ll learn to create sites that are free of navigation ?dead ends,? difficult to use interfaces, and other barriers to usability. All of the principles of User Centered Design (UCD) are covered along with critical Human Factors, and guidelines for implementing a test plan. Examples of Usability issues and how they are dealt with are covered through a case study focused on fixing an existing site. As new techniques and tools are introduced, the team of usability specialists will detail how they implement these new tools as they work through the evaluation, testing, and transformation stages.

Acknowledgments

xiii

About This Book

xv

Preface

xvii

Introduction to Usability

1

(30)

What Is Usability?

1

(7)

What Isn't Usability

8

(2)

A Bit of History

10

(2)

A Bit of Jargon

12

(1)

Human Factors

13

(3)

Why Usability

16

(1)

How Things End Up Unuseable

17

(2)

What You Need to Get Started in Web Site Usability

19

(5)

Educating Others About Usability

24

(3)

Chapter Summary

27

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

28

(1)

Discussion Topics

28

(3)

User-Centered Design

31

(28)

What Is User-Centered Design?

31

(4)

Users Don't Always Know What They Want

35

(1)

The Usability Life Cycle

36

(3)

Population vs. Sample

39

(6)

Knowing Your Users

45

(8)

The Iterative Redesign Cycle

53

(4)

Chapter Summary

57

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

58

(1)

Discussion Topics

58

(1)

The Usability Toolbox

59

(32)

It Takes Many Tools to ``Do'' Usability

59

(4)

The Toolbox

63

(27)

Chapter Summary

90

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

90

(1)

Discussion Topics

90

(1)

Human Factors

91

(34)

Behind the Scenes

91

(1)

What Is Human Factors Psychology?

92

(1)

A Brief History of Human Factors Psychology

93

(1)

What Do Human Factors Specialists Do?

93

(1)

What Kind of Training Do Human Factors Specialists Get?

94

(1)

Where Do Human Factors Specialists Work?

94

(9)

Optical Illusions

103

(3)

Hearing

106

(1)

Sensation and Perception

107

(2)

Human Memory and the Web

109

(10)

Tips for Text-Heavy Web Pages

119

(3)

Accelerators on the Web

122

(1)

Chapter Summary

123

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

124

(1)

Discussion Topics

124

(1)

Design Guidelines

125

(40)

Just the Facts

125

(9)

Getting Around

134

(5)

Other Niceties

139

(23)

Chapter Summary

162

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

162

(1)

Discussion Topics

163

(2)

Heuristic Evaluation

165

(30)

What Is a Heuristic?

165

(2)

Ten Usability Heuristics

167

(12)

Some Additional Heuristics for the Web

179

(7)

Heuristic Evaluation Methodology

186

(7)

Chapter Summary

193

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

193

(1)

Discussion Topics

194

(1)

Usability Lab Setup

195

(26)

Setting Up the Setup

195

(1)

General Lab Tips

196

(1)

Simple Lab Setup

197

(3)

Simple Lab Setup with Video

200

(5)

Lab with Observation Room

205

(2)

The Focus Group Room

207

(1)

Survey of Lab Equipment

208

(8)

Participant Compensation

216

(1)

No Clocks in the Lab!

217

(1)

Chapter Summary

218

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

218

(1)

Discussion Topics

219

(2)

Usability Testing

221

(30)

Not Just Another Tool in the Toolbox

221

(1)

Classical Experimental Research Design

222

(11)

Designing Usability Tasks

233

(3)

Potential Problems with Tasks

236

(1)

Executing the Plan

237

(10)

Chapter Summary

247

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

248

(1)

Discussion Topics

248

(3)

Web Accessibility

251

(28)

Usability and Accessibility

251

(2)

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Design Guidelines

253

(17)

XML and Web Accessibility

270

(6)

CSS2 and Beyond

276

(1)

Chapter Summary

277

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

277

(1)

Discussion Topics

278

(1)

Putting It All Together

279

(16)

Developing the Comprehensive Plan

279

(1)

The Company and Its Site

280

(1)

The Team

281

(2)

Implementing the Plan

283

(8)

Some Final Points

291

(1)

Chapter Summary

292

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

293

(1)

Discussion Topics

293

(2)

Transforming Data into Change

295

(22)

Why Study Statistics?

295

(2)

It's All About the Data

297

(2)

Start With a Timeline of Progress

299

(2)

Measures of Central Tendencies

301

(6)

Research Design Concepts

307

(3)

Conclusion

310

(1)

Web Server Log Analysis

311

(3)

Chapter Summary

314

(1)

Hands-On Exercises

315

(1)

Discussion Topics

315

(2)

Appendix A Usability Test for Xolax Corporation's Corporate Web Site

317

(20)

Introduction

317

(1)

Purpose

318

(1)

Test Objective/Problem Statements

318

(1)

User profiles

319

(3)

Methodology

322

(2)

Test Environment and Equipment Requirements

324

(1)

Evaluation Measures

324

(5)

Part A: Background Questionnaire

329

(3)

Part B: Orientation Script

332

(1)

Part C: Tape Consent Form

333

(1)

Part D: Post Test Questionnaire

334

(3)

Appendix B About the CD-Rom

337

(4)

System Instructions

338

(1)

System Requirements

339

(2)

Bibliography

341

(2)

Index

343

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