On-the-Spot Usability Reviews – Robert Hoekman, Jr.
An Event Apart 2008, Day 1, 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Read the previous talk in this series, Design Criteria: Actionable Ideas by Sarah Nelson, or view An Event Apart’s Table of Contents
On-the-Spot Usability Reviews
- An interaction designer and usability specialist
- Purpose, benefit, usage are the three keys in analysing a site’s usability
- “Clutter isn’t good, texture is.” – Seth Godin
- Giving away copies of “Designing the Obvious”
- http://theideacenter.org
- Yellow on the site needs to go
- Any tips to educate the client to not mess it up?
- If this is supposed to be like a billboard, do that. Don’t unite.
- People go right past text. They look, skim, and find “trigger words”
- http://asufoundation.org
- The tiny “Give to ASU” link is the whole point of this website.
- Homepage-news blips should go somewhere else, make them three bullet points and then a take action button
- People skip blocks of text, so make these bullet points
- Then click “Make a gift online” and you start the payment process
- Before you get to the form, answer questions and paragraphs on previous pages. Make sure there is NOTHING on the page that is focused on getting them through the process
- The “Select a college or unit for investing” … dragons be there
- Just get rid of the dropdown menus for people who have come through a link from a specific fund, rather than have them be prepopulated
- Do as much as possible to the workflow to get that information out from that page and off to somewhere else, where then they click “give” and have it filled in from there.
- http://schooldude.com
- Not many complaints. Whatever your webpage is, make your entry points clear.
- No one is going to read the text on the homepage. Treat it like a billboard, just drive them to the current info. Make that the important information. Hilight it, and eliminate information
- To get feedback on your own site:
- 5 second usability test. Show it to the user for 5 seconds – could be anyone, your mom, whoever. Then ask them to write down everything that they remember from the page. Your page should communicate its main purpose in 5 seconds and they should be able to remember that. Fast, cheap way to get that feedback.
- http://fivesecondtest.com/
- You upload your screenshot, it creates a link, and you email your link to people and they write the 5 bullet points they remember. Cool.
View the next talk in this series: Designing the Details: Web-App UI Design Beyond the Basics by Jason Fried, or skip to An Event Apart’s Table of Contents
