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Periodic user testing is an important element in
developing and maintaining a reader-friendly Website.
But formal usability tests are expensive and
time-consuming -- often prohibitively so.
Happily, inspection-based user testing methods,
ranging from a free-form
site review to
more structured approaches, provide a
cost-effective means of assessing (and thus improving)
the usability of almost any Website.
One of the most effective forms of inspection-based
user testing involves the use of a "usability checklist."
Checklist-based user testing is extremely inexpensive
to implement, and requires a surprisingly small number
of testers to be effective. It's also easy to schedule; it
can be used at virtually any time throughout the
development cycle, from the earliest prototype screens
to a full-blown Website.
Setting the Stage
Here's the basic method for employing a checklist-based
user test.
Step 1. Preliminary Self-Appraisal
No author can view his or her own work with dispassion.
Still, there are certain things that inevitably make for an
unfriendly Web page. (See Ten
Things to Avoid and Ten More
Things to Avoid for examples.) You can save
considerable time, both for yourself and for your
evaluators, if you start with a basic sweep of your site
for known usability problems. View this self-appraisal as a
preliminary step, however, and not as a substitute for
user testing methods.
Step 2: Provide checklists to your testers
The more independent and autonomous your testers are, the
more valuable the feedback they can provide. A topical site
will probably want to enlist the aid of volunteer testers with some
interest in the subject of the site. Corporate sites should
strongly consider using agency-based temporary employees
for user testing.
One important consideration is: how many testers are
enough? There's no hard-and-fast rule, but inspection-based
testing methods provide a surprisingly quick payback, even
with a small number of evaluators. Even a single tester
can probably uncover the most common usability problems
on your site. And a handful (4 or 5) is more than adequate
to ensure a generally reader-friendly Website.
It's also crucial to include 'Net novices in your test group. After all,
many of your site's readers will be new to the Internet and
to the Web.
Step 3: Provide some brief instructions
Understand that your evaluators will naturally assume that
the problems they encounter in using your site are the result
of some fault on their part, rather than a flaw in the design
of the site itself. It is therefore vitally important for you to
explain to your testers that you need them to make note of
any problems they encounter,
regardless of what they believe the underlying cause to be.
Step 4: Leave
In formal usability experiments, the experimenter typically
remains in the room to observe and record testers' behavior.
But unless you're a trained usability professional, your
presence will likely as not serve to inhibit your evaluators,
and thus compromise their ability to test your site. Unless
you're planning on providing a personally-supervised guided
tour of your site to all your
readers, leave your tester to the business of testing your site.
Allow your tester sufficient time to test your site. (What's
"sufficient" will obviously vary, depending on the
content and nature of the site. Allow at least 2-3 minutes
per page, but let your evaluator decide when the test is
finished.)
A Skeletal Checklist
Obviously, there is no "one-size-fits-all" reader-friendliness
checklist that's universally applicable to all the Websites
in the world. Still, you will get the best results from user
testing if you ask your testers to focus on a limited number
(6-10 is probably ideal) of fairly specific questions and criteria.
(Readers interested in learning more about basic guidelines
for creating friendly Web pages may want to check out
another article in this series,
What Is "Reader-Friendly"?)
Some suggested starting points for a reader-friendliness
checklist include:
- Clarity of Communication
Does the site convey a clear sense of its intended audience?
Does it use language in a way that is familiar to and comfortable
for its readers?
Is it conversational in its tone?
- Accessibility
Is load time appropriate to content, even on a slow
dial-in connection?
Is it accessible to readers with physical impairments?
Is there an easily discoverable means of communicating
with the author or administrator?
- Consistency
Does the site have a consistent, clearly recognizable
"look-&-feel"?
Does it make effective use of repeating visual themes to
unify the site?
Is it visually consistent even without
graphics?
- Navigation
Does the site use (approximately) standard link colors?
Are the links obvious in their intent and destination?
Is there a convenient, obvious way to maneuver among
related pages, and between different sections?
- Design & maintenance
Does the site make effective use of hyperlinks to tie related
items together?
Are there dead links? Broken CGI scripts? Functionless
forms?
Is page length appropriate to site content?
- Visual Presentation
Is the site moderate in its use of color?
Does it avoid juxtaposing text and animations?
Does it provide feedback whenever
possible?
(for example, through the
use of an easily recognizable ALINK
color, or a "reply" screen for forms-based pages)
Obtaining Feedback
A basic truism of usability testing is that there is
basically no such thing as a "user error." For every
problem your testers identify, make sure you ask enough
clarifying questions to allow you to understand the nature
of the difficulties they encountered. At all costs, however,
avoid the temptation to argue with your tester, or to
"explain away" the problems identified during testing.
If an evaluator found something confusing, then
it's a safe bet that some percentage of your overall
readership finds it equally unclear.
The Ultimate User Test
If you're ever lucky enough to have have the
chance, simply watch someone
navigate your site. Don't prompt them, coach them, or
correct them. Merely observe. Even for seasoned
systems and usability professionals, it's a profoundly
humbling experience.
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