Internet Beat

Gloria Rivera

Design for Interaction between Computers and Humans: Usability

As the use of the Internet has been growing exponentially, there are many efforts being made by researchers to determine and improve the satisfaction of visitors using web sites, so that there will be return visits.

The more a site helps people find the information they are looking for so that they can make decisions, the more usable it is. Web usability is receiving a great deal of focus and attention, especially as the use of the Internet for doing business is increasing.

What are researchers trying to find? They are looking for an equivalent of a spell checker, so that when designing a web site, one could run software to identify problems that could make it hard for users to find information, or problems that could make it hard for users to make decisions.

In the meantime, helpful software packages being used by the researchers, and which are available to anyone, include the two software tools following:

“Accrue” http://www.accrue.com allows the analysis of usage logs. This software by Accrue Software Inc is being used by Dow Jones and Company, and Land’s End catalog.

Astra Site Manager http://www-svca.mercuryinteractive.com/ is a software that scans web sites, highlighting functional areas with color-coded links and URLs to provide a complete visual map of a site. It makes possible to identify usage patterns for improving web site effectiveness. It is possible to try the software for free.

Some researchers say that the automated checking can not replace the usability testing by real people, but rather complement it. The best testers of the usability of a site are people trying to use it, to determine if they are satisfied in accessing the content.

Other researchers conclude that it is more important to be able to constantly make changes to the site than to “get things right.” They recommend that a site be constantly changed based on usability testing, user feedback, new browser releases, new features, and new applications.

The underlying process of designing for usability is: first, study what objectives users have; next, design as to make it easy for users to meet their goals; and last, test if the design fits the intended usage. These usability methods have become established components of web site development.

The March/April 2002 issue of IEEE Internet Computing http://computer.org/internet/ has an extended section describing various approaches to improve web usability. The search to provide software that can improve the usability of small, medium and large web sites, and be readily and easily applicable, is a feverishly active field. The following links to are from this issue:

http://acm.org/sigchi/ ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction SIGCHI

http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/index.html NIST Web Usability

http://www.usableweb.com Usable Web

http://www.upassoc.org/index.html Usability Professionals Association

http://www.universalusability.org/ Universal Usability Guide

http://www.acm.org/dl/ Digital Library of Association for Computer Machinery

http://www.oclc.org/home/ Online Computer Library Center

http://sims.berkeley.edu School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley

http://www.parc.com; http://www.parc.xerox.com/parc-go.html Palo Alto Research Center

http://www.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html Web Style Guide (to achieve usability)

This next list of links includes other Usability resources, which I consider excellent, linked to from the above sites:

http://www.designsbymark.com/designtips/index.shtml Usability tips

http://www.merges.net/theory/20010301.html Effective use of forms in websites

http://www.merges.net/theory/20010226.html Making sites easy to control

http://www.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/interface/basic_interface1.html Usability section of Web Style Guide

http://usability.kde.org/info/links.php The KDE Usability Project

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/intro/index.txl Intro to usability

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/resources/overview.txl Usability First resources

http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability/ Usability methods

http://www.usability.gov/ Usability basics

This last web site is the most comprehensive. If you can only visit one site, visit http://www.usability.gov/.

The satisfaction of visitors using web sites will be enhanced. Such is the purpose of Usability.

To contribute to the Internet Beat, contact Gloria Rivera webmaster@seguin.net