Blog Post #6: Usability

Long time no see! This time the topic is usability.

Prompt:

There is a lot of talk in the web design community about user experience and usability design. What is usability? What is meant by usability testing? What considerations are important for you as a designer if you were designing a site that focuses on "usability."

Can you find a site that is a good example of usability design and/or that provides resources or insights into usability?

Usability is defined in web design as making a site user-friendly. It might also encompass making sites accessible for the disabled, I guess. In short, you want to make your site "sticky" - a site that people will stay on for a long time. And people don't stay on websites a long time in general, because we're by nature not very patient. Then there are those people - myself included - who just get easily distracted (the old "'OOH Shiny!' ADD" problem). And other times people don't want to think a lot when they visit a website, for whatever reason. Maybe they're just impatient, or maybe they're tired or in a hurry.

I had a usability problem recently myself with a website. The site in question was the website for the Alliance Française de San Diego. Having received an e-newsletter from them (I guess I subscribed when I took their online placement test) which said the AF would be giving the Test d'Évaluation du Français (a French proficiency test), I e-mailed the person I needed to e-mail to indicate my interest in the test. They e-mailed me back the day before the registration deadline to send me the proper form, and indicated I could pay for the test online if I wished. I went to their website to do so, but could not find any page on which I could pay for my test. I began to panic, thinking I would miss the registration deadline for this test too, as I had for the TCF (Test de Connaissance du Français). It turned out that no page for certification test registration exists as of yet on their current website, which is still being set up. I was told however, that I could pay by submitting my payment under "donations" for the time being, which I did. This worked out, and I just took the test today as a matter of fact!

My issue with the AF San Diego website is that I spent so much time searching it for a page I wasn't aware did not yet exist. I can forgive them slightly as their website, in its current state anyway, is still a work-in-progress (it's an even newer site than the mostly unfinished site I took my placement test on several months ago). But I do think if they want to make a point out of being a qualified testing center for the TEF and TCF, both exams recognized by the French Ministry of Commerce and Industry, they need to make a page/section on their certification exams a priority. And to be honest, I don't know who's doing their web design, but based on the layout the site appears to be WordPress-based. If so, it would not be too difficult to make a page featuring their certification tests. But I have had a good experience with them by phone, e-mail, and today when I took the test, so I really shouldn't blame the people who work at AF San Diego. How their website looks - and how non-user friendly it might be - is not their fault. (I feel compelled to say this as well in case by some random chance they actually find this blog post and feel offended. Blogger is owned by Google, after all, and people seem to find my posts on my other blog via Google Alerts fairly easily).

Usability testing is what it sounds like - testing the usability of something. It's like focus groups in the film industry, which are shown an early cut of a film so the filmmakers can garner some audience feedback before the film goes out to the general public. With web design usability testing, you are allowing a person or persons to test the site for the same reason - to get feedback. Beta testers for software and video games are essentially providing the same thing to software/game developers (I'm actually part of an open online beta myself at the moment, as indicated in the previous post - though I've had trouble trying to access the game I'm part of a beta for). I did a sort of usability test shortly before debuting my redesigned author website. I sent the link to some online author friends and some other online friends who know a thing or two about web design, in order to get feedback. This was useful, and I felt I got something out of it.

If I were a designer designing a site that fits usability standards, I would try to make it as clean and simple to understand as possible. While I dislike the "neutral fits all" idea preached by Sabrina Soto on her home staging show Get it Sold (it drives me nuts that she refuses to use any color besides neutrals when painting, even though her reasons may be good ones in the end, seeing as she's a pro designer and I'm not), I do like clean and simple. The simpler your page is, the faster it loads as well, which is another important usability consideration. In a sense, designing for usability is like living green - when living green you make changes that not only better the environment, but ultimately help everyone live a better life (not to mention it can potentially offset global warming, maybe giving this planet a chance to survive till we have some backup plan in place in case the Earth becomes too hot for humans to handle). Even little changes in usability could help a lot, I think.

Lastly, here are a couple good sites on this subject:

-Usability First - Web Design - This site provides some good information on making your website usable. Kinda targeted more to businesses though.

-Usability Guidelines - This is from usability.gov, a website maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that is dedicated to the subject of usability - their tagline is "your guide to providing usable and useful Web sites." They provide some good resources both on this page and elsewhere on the site.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Au revoir!