Usability Studies: Testing Your Website
Introduction
The web is no longer “new and exciting.” Having a website does not automatically makea company innovative or creative. Web users and surfers are expecting more from thewebsites they visit. They are no longer impressed by animated gifs and interesting icons.Users come to a site for a reason. They have a goal when they visit. They are seekinginformation and they want to be able to find it quickly and easily. They want a site that iseasy to use. A new word that has entered the vocabulary within the past few years is
usability
. Usability can be defined as “the extent to which a product can be used byspecified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfactionin a specified context of use” (Bevan, 1997). How do you know if your site is usable?The best way to find out is to conduct a usability study.
Significance of Topic
A usable website can be the difference between gaining or losing a new customer. If auser visits a site for a specific reason but can’t figure out the navigation structure or thelayout, he may leave in frustration, never to return. If a user visits a site and effortlesslyfinds the information he needs, most likely you have made a customer for life (or at leastuntil the next redesign). Usability is no longer a “nice-to-have” on a website; it is now arequirement. For this reason, companies and designers have realized that usabilitystudies (also called usability testing) are an essential part of the web design process.Usability studies enable designers to learn from representative users if the site “works”the way it is expected to. Usability testing is the best way to uncover problems in a site’sdesign.Usability studies can be involved and detailed, with many respondents participating, ormay follow a more stripped-down model, with only a handful of participants. They canbe conducted on the live site or on paper prototypes. It is important to be aware of thedifferent characteristics of usability testing, the different types of testing that can beconducted, and how to conduct a typical usability study.
Discussion of topic
Usability
Before discussing usability studies, the idea of “usability” should be understood. Whendiscussing websites, usability can be defined as the aspects of a system that make itpleasing to use, easy to learn, and easy to use and navigate. Usability can make thedifference between “performing a task accurately or not, completing a job or not, andenjoying the process or being frustrated” (Usability Introduction, 1998). In other words,to be usable, a website’s layout should be intuitive; it should require as few steps as
Usability Studies: Testing Your Website2
possible to retrieve information; steps to retrieving information should be easy toremember; and the site should leave the users with a positive feeling about the site andthe organization (Bernard, 2000).Usability is important in keeping users at the website. There is no training in how to usea website. A user visits the website and begins looking for information. If a website isnot effective within the first few seconds of arrival, the user is lost (Rhodes, interviewwith Jakob Nielsen, 1999). One of the core usability concepts is the ability of the user tonavigate to find what they want. “Without usability you are dead in the water in thisregard” (Rhodes, interview with Jakob Nielsen, 1999).Jakob Nielsen is one of the chief experts in web usability. He has written a book on webusability entitled Usability Engineering and writes a biweekly column on web usability.In his article “What is ‘Usability’?” (1998) he gives the five characteristics of usability.The first characteristic is ease of learning. Can a user who has never seen the websitebefore learn it well enough to accomplish basic tasks? The second characteristic isefficiency of use. How fast can an experienced user accomplish tasks once he or she haslearned to use the system? Memorability is the third characteristic. If a user haspreviously visited a website, can he or she remember enough to use it more effectivelythe next time? The fourth characteristic is error frequency and severity. How often dousers make errors while on the website and how serious are these errors? The finalcharacteristic is subjective satisfaction. How much does the user enjoy using thewebsite?According to Jakob Nielsen in the article “Web Usability: Why and How: How to Get aUsable Website” (1998), the best approach to creating a usable website is to follow somebasic steps during the design process.1.
If a website has already been created and will be redesigned to be more usable, don’tthrow out the old site immediately. It is a good idea to run a small test on the olddesign to see if there are some good parts that should remain.2.
Test sites that have a similar purpose to the one you are designing. Interestingsolutions to a current problem may be found on other websites.3.
Conduct a field study to learn how users work in their own environment. Real work practice is always different than what a manager says it is.4.
Create some simple prototypes of a variety of designs on paper and test with a fewusers.5.
From these tests, choose the best design and create a web prototype (that is notcompletely built).6.
Test as many times as possible.7.
Prepare an almost-finished user interface that contains the important pages and thenavigation elements. Test again.8.
Once the design is launched, start planning the next redesign.
Usability Studies: Testing Your Website3
It is obvious that many of the steps to creating a usable website involves user testing.Once designers know exactly what makes a usable website they can begin the creationprocess. Before the site goes live, usability studies should be conducted. The nextsection will discuss different types of usability studies, and then focus on the mostcommon type of usability study, which uses a “lab test” environment.
Usability Studies
In their most common form, usability studies take a website and put real users in front of it with real-world situations (“Usability,” 2000). It is important to always keep in mindthat the ultimate goal is to create a great website. The best tool for determining if awebsite is great is to watch users use it. If they can use it then the goal has been attained.If not, fix the problem and test again (Rhodes, interview with Jared Spool, 1999).Usability studies may have variations on this method. One variation is the ExpertAssessment method (Whitehand, 1997). With this method, one or two usability expertstest a site throughout the development process. This is a quick and inexpensive way toconduct a usability study and provides quick feedback. However, in using experts it maybe difficult to judge how much trouble certain problems will cause the average user(Whitehand, 1997). Another variation is Participatory Evaluations, or experts with users.Several usability experts pair up with a representative user and work together on a set of pre-defined tasks centered around the website (Whitehand, 1997). This method enrichesthe experts’ understanding of how users use the website, but the users’ way of workingmay be affected by having an expert as a partner.Some studies do not use actual sites at all. In some studies, a paper prototype is placed ina three-ring binder with dividers and labeled tabs that represent destinations of hyperlinks. “The person using your prototype will view one ‘page’ at a time, and skip tothe next ‘link’ by checking the labeled tab on the divider” (“Usability: Testing Sites withProspective Users,” 1996). In fact, some usability experts recommend testing this way.“This allows testing at a stage where we know enough about what the application issupposed to do to be able to make meaningful design recommendations but where wehave not invested too many resources” (Wilt, 1997).The most common type of usability study, however, is mentioned above: “take a websiteand put real users in front of it with real-world situations.” This method uses a “lab test”environment, where participants follow a set of pre-defined tasks while being observed(Whitehand, 1997).
Planning the Study
A usability test with five users will usually uncover 80% of usability problems (Nielsen,“Cost of User Testing a Website,” 1998). In his article “Why You Only Need to TestWith Five Users,” Nielsen states that when a single user is tested, he finds about a thirdof all there is to learn about how usable the website is. With the second user, there issome overlap in what is found because he does some of the same things as the first user.
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Usability Testing
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