Developing Usability Tools and Techniques for Designing and Testing Web Sites

1. Developing Usability Tools and Techniques for Designing and Testing Web Sites Jean Scholtz Sharon Laskowski Laura Downey

2. Approach • Rapid, remote, and automated • Case studies • used to identify possible tools/ techniques • Development of tool/technique • Use of tool/technique to determine additional functionality, type of sites applicable to

3. Usability Awareness Tools • Can be used by non-usability professionals • Educates about usability and points out potential usability problems

4. WebSAT • WebSAT • web guidelines turned into Perl scripts • checks static html code • accessibility • form use • maintainability • navigation • performance • readability

5. Usability Tools and Techniques • Goals • reduce time spent in testing and analysis • reach a wider audience • provide more efficient methods for obtaining usability information • 2 tools and 2 techniques • WebCAT and WebVIP • Beta testing and virtual scenario collection

6. WebCAT • Category analysis tool • Provides way to check your classification scheme remotely

7. WebVIP • Provides a way to log and timestamp links in an instrumented web site • Used in conjunction with a set of tasks usability engineers can gather data about the time and paths of users carrying out these tasks.

8. Beta Testing • Used this technique for a small, focused web application • Data collected in 3 ways • rating questions • open-ended comments • actual end product of web application

9. Results • Open-ended comments gave us “best” results- unique problems, special situations • Ratings allowed us to verify that second version had made some improvements • Data collection showed problems that were not caught in other methods • “Test” submissions increased data by 25%

10. Recommendations • Use with focused web applications • Provide short rating scale • good for comparisons as well as “usability focus” • Provide “test” option • Provide way to get open-ended comments • Collect end product to examine

11. Virtual Participatory Design Meeting • Redesign of NIST Virtual Library (NVL) • 2 sets of end users • library workers • users • Started with library workers • Introduced scenarios to them in face to face meeting

12. Results • In a two week period, collected 28 scenarios • 18 included comments • Classified these into several categories which will be used in design and in usability testing • Plan to use this with users as well

13. Recommendations • Use with groups who feel comfortable using electronic communication • Provide examples • Use e-mail to alert group to new scenarios • Do a pilot test of the scenario data collection

14. Future • Collect information on usage of tools and techniques • Http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/~webmet/ • Document additional functionality and site applicability • Carryout more case studies to determine new tools/ techniques