Posts within the category: Usability

February 2, 2012

Video Contest: Win a Government Website Usability Test

 What? Monster trucks in government?! It's a video throwdown from GSA's First Fridays Product Testing Program. They're sponsoring a contest: make a two-minutes-or-less video explaining why your agency deserves a free usability test. You could win. That means testing your site or app with real live customers and getting expert guidance on how to improve it.  

Want to do usability testing on your federal website but don’t have funds or staff? Enter the "Win a Free Website Usability Test" Video Contest. Contest deadline is February 29, 2012.

Submit a video (two minutes or less) addressing why your government website or web application is a good candidate for a free usability test. Make a creative video explaining the importance of your site, the problems you think need fixing, and a creative push for why you should win.

• Your site must be a public-facing .gov or .mil website
• Your team must work with First Fridays to plan the test
• Your site stakeholder or designee must observe a First Fridays test
• If you win, your site stakeholder must attend your usability test

The GSA First Fridays Product Testing Program has tested over 25 government websites. After a morning of in-depth testing with real website customers, the team meets over lunch and identifies quick-fix solutions to the top three problems.

Now’s your chance. Contest winners must be willing to make site improvements within 30 days of the test and learn to do simple usability testing.  Why? Because small changes have a BIG impact on customer experience.

To sign up to observe a First Fridays test, email FirstFridays@gsa.gov

October 20, 2010

Your Web Content Is Hurting My Eyes and My Brain

Dear U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,

Usually I comment on the quality of the writing at a web site, but I've got to talk to you frankly today. The text on your home page is hurting my eyes:

• Your masthead is right-aligned
• Your left column is centered
• The labels for the main sections of your site are left-aligned (white text on a blue band) but each item listed below is right-aligned, which leaves a ragged blank mess on the left

SEC, I don't know where to look. My eyes are hopping around everywhere; I am conducting a very unproductive experiment in scanning. Maybe you could make your page look more like the Food and Drug Administration's home page. The FDA's isn't perfect, but the text is left-aligned.

SEC, please bone up on the usability research on text alignment. For homework, you must read:

• Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability by Jakob Nielsen
• Eye Gaze Patterns while Searching vs. Browsing a Website from Usability News

And, SEC, whatever you do, please do not use the HR Management home page as your model. The only thing worse than text with hard-to-scan alignment is text that moves.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

January 8, 2010

Epic Fail: Art-House MovieTheater's "How to Buy Tickets" page

We're lucky to live near the American Film Institute's Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, a beautifully restored 1930s theater that offers satisfying alternatives to multiplex films. But AFI's website is a nightmare if you want to complete the simple transaction that will keep the theater in the black: buy tickets online.

AFI's home page sports a prominent Buy Tickets link. But, inexplicably, you can't buy tickets on the How to Buy Tickets page, a page that truly fails task-oriented users:

• There's no link to the Buy Tickets page, though it would be safe to assume that a user who's reading instructions on how to buy tickets wants to buy tickets.
• The paragraph under the heading Online includes this
  sentence: "There are many links on this site that you may choose to get
  to the purchase point, such as: Now Playing, Films by Title, Film
  Series and Calendar..." but doesn't actually link to any of those links. This kind of meta-writing is always a bad sign: copy that refers to links without linking, pages that begin  "On this page, you will find ..."
  
  

 

To be fair to AFI, I decided to compare its online ticket purchase process that of similar theaters. Who knew that art-house movie theater web sites comprise the Make-It-Difficult-To-Buy-Tickets genre?

• The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts presents a small Tickets link under its description of each film, but site-wide it has placed the Buy Tickets links under the Buy Stuff label in the main navigation. You have to scroll way down to the bottom of the Buy Stuff page—past the travel mugs, gift cards, posters, and t-shirts—to reach the Buy Tickets link.
• The Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida is better. The site lacks a Buy Tickets link in its main navigation, but the home page text does explain "Click Show Times to Purchase Tickets" and this sentence appears above the showtimes on each film-specific page.
• The Film Forum in Manhattan gets it right with a prominent Buy Tickets link in the main navigation. Even better, the drop-down from the Buy Tickets link lists the films currently showing, the calendar, and a couple of explanations of when you can or can't buy tickets online (albeit with some weird double asterisks).

Helping users complete tasks is a website's highest calling. If you want your site to be task-oriented, take a look at these excellent offerings from Webcontent.gov:

• Step-by-Step Guide: Roadmap to a Task-Focused Website (PDF)
• Strategies for Determining Top Tasks
• Task-Focused Templates and Resources
• Free webinar for government employees: Three Essential Tips for Creating a Task–Based Website – Jan. 13, 2010

  -- Leslie O'Flahavan 

October 27, 2009

Action Buttons Confuse When There's Nothing For The User To Do

This strident pop-up from my bank (note the huge exclamation point) has a simple message: Sandy Spring Bank is improving my ebiz reports. I'm happy. And they've provided me a nice little bulleted list of the four ways the new reports will be better than the old ones.

Now, most web users like to click buttons. When I'm offered a"Tell Me More" or a "Remind Me Later" button, I'm as likely to click as the next guy or gal. But don't invite me to do something when there's really nothing for me to do. [Click the screen shot to see it full-size.]

 

Instead of helping me dig deeper, these buttons raise all kinds of confusion in my mind:

• You offer to tell me more, but what more is there for you to tell me, Sandy Spring? I only want you to tell me more about the new reports if I have to take action in order to get them. Do I need to do something? If so, why aren't you telling me now?
• Remind me later? To do what? Again, if I need to do something, tell me now.

This pop-up begins by illuminating a new offering, but it ends by confusing me. And while I might forgive another site for an action button content glitch, I hold my bank to a higher standard. I'm banking online these days, and I want to be quite sure that my bank is solid, responsible, and credible. So I've got to say that these go-nowhere buttons—combined with the error-laden first sentence—are causing me to have a big question mark (not a green exclamation point) about my bank.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

October 23, 2009

Research Report: Old Writing Rules Apply to New Social Media

While updating our web writing courses, I've been scouring usability research to find new studies that apply to web writing. The findings from two separate research studies from the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University remind me that old web writing guidelines apply to new media—social networking sites. Both studies flagged common writing issues—confusing and unfamiliar terminology, and inadequate user feedback and error messages—as problems that harm usability.

1. Usability Evaluation of Three Social Networking Sites. The study evaluated the usability of MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut. Users completed 10 tasks for each site, including adding new information to a profile, making a photo album, and changing notification options for messages. Users rated the difficulty of each task and their satisfaction with each site.
2. Trick or Tweet: How Usable is Twitter for First-Time Users? Users performed eight tasks on Twitter, including creating an account, posting a tweet, and responding to a tweet. Users rated the ease of use and their satisfaction with the site. 

Confusing and Unfamiliar Terminology
SURL researchers found that inconsistencies in link terminology resulted in users' failure to complete tasks. For example, My Space uses the Term “My Account” as a link. But clicking on the link brought up a page with the heading “Settings.” 

Users were confused by unfamiliar terms. MySpace users clicked on “Photo Cube” expecting to make a photo album. They found that “Photo Cube” is a function that allows users to print photos. Twitter users were unclear about whether to use “Profile” or “Setting” to edit their information.

Not surprisingly, most new users “had difficulty learning the ‘language’ that was unique to Twitter.” What was the difference between followers and following? Users were confused about Twitter-unique terms such as “RT” (retweet) for reposting a message from another user, the use of @symbols to indicate usernames in tweets, and the use of hashtags (#) to indicate topic tags for messages.

Twitter language proved so confusing that users had very poor success rates in some tasks: Only 15.4% were successful in sending a message and only 38.5% were successful in replying to messages. Users concluded that Twitter was “complex and felt they would need to learn quite a bit before using it.” Participants reported that "they would not use the service often.”

Poor Feedback and Unhelpful Error Messages
Poor feedback and unhelpful error messages also contributed to the failure of social network users to complete tasks. MySpace provided a poor error message to users who forgot to give their photo albums a name. Twitter users often weren’t sure whether they had successfully completed a task  such as sending a message. They were looking for feedback, a completion message or visual confirmation—an icon or a change in font color—to confirm their success.

Tips for Applying the Research to Your Writing
The studies’ usability findings are specific to social networking sites. But applying the recommendations to your writing will improve the usability and user satisfaction for both traditional and new media websites. 

• Use terms consistently. Don’t change language mid-stream. For example, is “editing” a profile the same as “updating” a profile? If so, choose one term and use it throughout the site. Consistency is especially important for links because the repetition of link language assures users that they’ve landed on the correct page. If users click “My Account,” the landing page should be labeled “My Account” not ‘Setting.”
• Use plain and intuitive language. The link “print photos” is more intuitive than “photo cube.”
• Explain new terms. You may think a term is self-explanatory, but first-time users may not know your language: tweets, followers, following, photo cube, wall. Provide a brief explanation of terms when users encounter them or link to a glossary.
• Provide helpful feedback and useful error messages. Provide confirmation messages to users: “You have successfully added photos to your album.” Write error messages that explain why the user failed. “Your user name and password do not match” is more helpful than “login failed.”

-- Marilynne Rudick (guest blogger)

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