Usability Testing of World Wide Web Sites

KEYWORDS

Usability testing, evaluation, usability engineering, World Wide Web.

© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.

DESCRIPTION

World Wide Web (Web) site usability - for better or worse - affects millions of users on a daily basis. As the capabilities of the Web continue to expand through HTML extensions, VRML, Java, and ActiveX, site designers are becoming overwhelmed by a proliferation of viable interaction techniques. Just because a technology is possible, however, does not mean it is desirable, nor that it is being incorporated in a productive manner. Many Web sites, both those connected to the Internet and those available through an institutional intranet, have become cluttered with useless and confusing, albeit cool, new features.

Although usability engineering has come to play an increasingly important role in conventional software development, it is rarely part of Web site development. Some good Web style guides have begun to appear, which can aid the site designer. The adherence to up-front usability guidelines by itself, however, does not guarantee a usable end product. A distinct evaluation process is required. This workshop shall address that aspect of usability engineering: usability testing. The goal of the workshop is to promote and facilitate such testing by creating a compendium of methods for evaluating the usability of Web sites, along with some suggested approaches for addressing institutional barriers to usability testing.

The participants' position papers will provide the group with an initial set of methods that have been successfully used by members prior to Atlanta. During the workshop we shall explore three major themes:

• What are the known usability problems in Web sites, and what testing methods successfully uncover these problems?
• What are the special characteristics (limitations and opportunities) of the Web as a medium, and how can we exploit these characteristics in our testing?
• What are the major organizational hurdles that need to be overcome to permit usability testing to take place, and how can they be addressed?

We intend for the group interaction during the workshop to yield novel methods and adaptations of existing methods that are tailored specifically to testing Web site usability.

Each theme shall be approached in essentially the same way: generating a large list of ideas through brainstorming; clarifying, grouping, and prioritizing this list; and then breaking into small groups to discuss, develop, and refine the significant items.

Web sites are proliferating. By every indication this growth will only continue to explode. Given the unparalleled size of the user community and the dearth of usability evaluation that has accompanied the technology's growth, the potential for frustration, misery and lost revenue from hard to use Web sites is unprecedented. By producing a coherent compendium of successfully used and specially developed methods, this workshop can help institute good practices before bad ones become too entrenched.

More detail on this workshop can be found at: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/webhci/chi97testing/