LawLibTech

November 18, 2004

Internet Librarian - Usability Research Update

I'm back from Internet Librarian, and it's time for catch-up. I still have several sessions to tell you about. The conference was excellent...now I just need to get the CD so I can listen to all the stuff I missed! Monterey was much warmer this year than usual and the rain threatened by weather.com last week certainly never materialized. My raincoat and all those warm jackets I brought along just took up space.

Back to the program. Usability seems to be somewhat of a moving target. Are we gradually learning more about how people use the web, or are people using the web differently as they become more experienced? I don't know the answer to that one, but Darlene Fichter gave us a great update on the current thinking on usability.

There are three elements that make up usability; ease of use, ease of learning and fitness for purpose. The most usable sites tend to be the ordinary ones. If you're striving for usability, go with the ordinary and follow conventions. The site should work in a way that users would expect it to, with no surprises.

Darlene recommended Eric Schaffer's new book, the Institutionalization of Usability:

Another usability resource is the recent Poynter Eyetrack study. Though they studied news sites in particular, some interesting implications for web sites in general were also uncovered. Among the results:

• Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior.
• Large type promotes scanning.
• If a headline is the same size as the blurb, and is bold and positioned on the same line as the text, it's more likely to be read.
• The center of the page is crucial.

Among other tips were:

• Animation captures attention but doesn't increase recall.
• Users checked the right navigation menu more often and ignored the top of the page where banner ads typically appear.

Another interesting question is how users evaluate the credibility of a web site. It turns out that they don't evaluate credibility by checking a site's author or credentials, but instead tend to base it on the professional look of the site.

What about navigation? We might have guessed that deep sites are more difficult to navigate than shallow ones, but nonetheless, the "3 click rule" that states that users won't click more than 3 times to get to the information they're seeking is a myth.

Though the intent is likely not to slow down users, in fact, expandable menus are slower to navigate. Vertical menus are preferred.

Another myth is that users won't scroll. According to Darlene, you can place links and text below the fold as long as the page doesn't look like it stops. You can make it obvious that there's more information on the page by making sure not to have every column end at the same place.

Jargon is always a usability pitfall. Librarians may want to refer to "Library Terms That Users Understand" to get ideas on how to use terms that will be clear to the user.

Make sure not to make your pages a "wall of text", which can be intimidating, boring and painful for users. People will skip straight text. For readability include bullet points and white space.

And this was just the stuff I was able to get down on my notepad! Darlene really covered ground.

July 05, 2004

Usability Testing - Morae

Camtasia is a handy little piece of software. I use it mainly to record training sessions, though it can be handy for presentations and for creating web tutorials as well. Because Camtasia records anything happening on a computer screen, it is also a logical choice for recording usability tests. Techsmith must have realized that's how Camtasia was being used, because they've produced another product specifically for that purpose call Morae.

But, as mentioned on Library Chic, while Morae does offer some features that are particularly useful for usability testing, the price is a bit of a barrier. The cost, $1,300, indicates that there's much more here than just a screen recorder.

And that's true, it does more than just record. With the Viewer, the test can be watched live by observers in a separate room. There are features to make it easier to review the recording, for example, "markers" can be added at interesting points in the test so it's easy to get back to just that spot. Events, such as mouse clicks and page changes are indexed to make it easy to search the recording. Browsable segments can be created for a particular task.

If you're on a budget, you can probably make do with Camtasia. But for serious usability testing, Morae certainly seems to have its advantages. Any users of Morae out there that would like to comment?