Week 8 Usability Testing Materials

This week, I'm going to introduce you about the usability testing materials. Here is the link of the article:
http://www.infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/evaluation/usabilitytestingmaterials.asp


As the author mentioned, there are 7-8 items we need to prepare for usability testing. The first one is the test schedule. We need to prepare and specify it, so everyone can follow the schedule and avoid someone will make hasty changes to schedules if no one knows. In the schedule, the author suggested that we can specify the date and time of each test session, together with the participant name. And we should make sure the schedule can be accessed and known to the relevant parties.


Also, we need to prepare the observer guidelines, since it's important that the observers are informed about appropriate behaviour. Script is needed to prepare too, as we can read a formal script to each participant in order to ensure that all participants receive the same information and avoid giving too much or too little information when we don't have one. Consent form is also needed to prepare for obtaining written consent from the participant, if we want the taping. This consent form should state exactly what we are taping and what the tape will be used for. The other materials we need is task cards. The written description of the task in the card allows the participants to refer back to the card when they are doing the task. If we want to randomise the order of task presentation, we should put the cards in the appropriate sequence before the participant arrives in order to give impression that the moderator is well-prepared. Moreover, there are the logging sheets needed for dropping down notes about what the participant does during the test. The logging sheets can be in free form or detailed ones. The author suggests to use mixed form - free-form sheets, with check-boxes at the bottom to note particular events. Questionnaire is optional to gather demographic information and to obtain subjective feedback and comments.


In my opinion, those materials can help us to prepare well for usability testing and it's easier to make the testing process go smoothly. It's important to be well prepared, so it helps to get actual data from participants(users).

Week 7 Essential Components of Web Accessibility

Since we learned and studied the accessibility parts this week, I chose an article, which introduces the essential components of web accessibility. Here is the link: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php


So, the first question we may ask is, "what are the essential components of web accessibility?" As the author mentioned, these components include:

• content - the information in a Web page or Web application, including: 1) natural information such as text, images, and sounds, and 2) code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.


• Web browsers, media players, and other "user agents"


• assistive technology, in some cases - screen readers, alternative keyboards, switches, scanning software, etc.


• users' knowledge, experiences, and in some cases, adaptive strategies using the Web


• developers - designers, coders, authors, etc., including developers with disabilities and users who contribute content


• authoring tools - software that creates Web sites


• evaluation tools - Web accessibility evaluation tools, HTML validators, CSS validators, etc.

The author also indicates that these components work together for achieving accessibility. The components are actually related. Below is a figure to show the relationship between them.





Web developers usually use authoring tools and evaluation tools to create Web content.
People ("users") use Web browsers, media players, assistive technologies, or other "user agents" to get and interact with the content.

And interdependencies between components exist, e.g. for alternative text on images:

• Technical specifications address alternative text (for example, HTML defines the alternative text attribute (alt) of the image element (img))


• WAI guidelines - WCAG(Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), ATAG(Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines), and UAAG(User Agent Accessibility Guidelines), these guidelines define how to implement alternative text for accessibility in the different components


• Developers provide the appropriate alternative text wording


• Authoring tools enable, facilitate, and promote providing alternative text in a Web page


• Evaluation tools are used to help check that alternative text exists


• User agents provide human and machine interface to the alternative text


• Assistive technologies provide human interface to the alternative text in various modalities


• Users know how to get the alternative text from their user agent and/or assistive technology as needed

After reading this article, I think those 7 essential components are really important and needed. For accessibility, the website should be designed to be usable to all people, even the disabilities. Therefore, the website needs to be carefully designed, developed and edited. It's the developers' job to design and maintain the website. The users are also involved, if those website design can base on users' habits and needs, etc, so the website can satisfy them. The content is presented to user and it is the information which users are looking for, so it is needed to be well organized and carefully designed. To ensure the design's quality, we need the technologies and tools (Authoring tools, Evaluation tools and Assistive technologies). And developers can follow the guidelines to check if the website design is considered to be accessible. There are also web browsers, media needed to support the design.

Week 6 SEO is simply following good web development practices

I found an article for SEO guidelines. Here is the link:
http://csarven.ca/internal-seo-guidelines

For SEO, the author states that Meta keywords are not necessary, because the search engine indexers would determine the nature and the relevancy of the document and can't rely on what the document claims it to be for the purposes of accuracy. And the results gained from Meta keywords are negligible nowadays. In my opinion, although the Meta keywords are not important as the author said, there is no harm, we can still do it and don't need to put too much time for doing it. And there is another resource that provides that search engine like Yahoo still gives it importance.

On the other hand, choosing keywords is important. Just concentrating towards two or three keyword combinations which are precise and simple is enough. Since an increase in keyword density may not be a good indicator for the relevancy of a document and therefore it does not contribute to better rankings. That's really what I think. Users input words related to what they need to search through search engine. So in early stage of website development, we should analyze and study what they are always looking for for specific content, and we can then choose the keywords. Those keywords surely assist human searches.

As the author said, the search indexer starts to parse a page from the top and it is the search engine to establish the relevancy of the page as fast as possible. So the relevant and important content should be put higher in hierarchy in the HTML source order. This contributes to have higher rankings.

To conclude, the relevant content with precise and appropriate keywords can contribute not only to SEO, but also the usability. This help visitors find relevant information after they search for keywords through search engine and they can find the website's information is usable to them. The higher and more relevant information are put in website's html source, the easier the search engine can find our website.

Week 5 Popular Fonts

This week, I found an article which is about fonts. The link is
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/fonts/

In the article, the author points out that Verdana is one of the most popular fonts on the web. Because it has a simple, straightforward design, and the characters or glyphs are not easily confused for the visitors. For example, the upper-case "I" and the lower-case "L" have unique shapes, unlike Arial, in which the two glyphs may be easily confused. See it below:

Besides, for using Verdana, there is the spacing between letters. This make sure the readability when they are at small sizes.

Another popular font is Trebuchet MS. It has its own style and artistic feel. It is also readable, but some letters such as the ampersand (&), which may decrease readability. You can see this example below:


I think this type of font is really attactive, because its artistic style is different from other fonts. If we use them to be the heading in the website, it surely can draw the attention of visitor because of its appearance.

Georgia is also common on the web. It is a serif font, more along the lines of Times New Roman. For the size, it is wider than similar fonts meant for print design. Since Georgia is not the default text of the browser, the users can see and find that some styles has been applied to the font.

In my opinion, we should choose the fonts carefully for the web design. All we need to remember is that they should be readable. Also, the fonts we choose can attact visitor's attention and make the website's look different from the others.

Week 4 The Business Value of Web Standards

This time, I read an article, which indicates that the web standards can bring us the business value. The link is:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000266.php

First, web standard can help us to have a speed development. By using web standards, we can validate our pages through validation service. This shows us exactly where our errors are, reduces the time developers spend on quality assurance, and gives our site incredible consistency between browsers. In my opinion, it's true that it benefits to the site developer. Because this saves time for finding errors and lessens our development work, such as Quality Assurance. The speed development is important, because it ensures that the development is on schedule, provides cost-saving and saves time.

Second, using web standards simplify maintenance. The standards help us keeping visual design separate from content, but logically linked to each page. This clean separation makes it much easier for us to develop and maintain our pages, primarily because the division corresponds to most teams’ distinctions between design and editorial work. That makes the maintenance in the future easier. Since web site maintenance cannot be avoided, it's better that the clean separation is implemented between visual design and content for later improvement or changing of the website.

To conclude, by participating in standards development, it can bring business values to our site. Although we should spend lots of effort to achieve those web standards, the important thing is that the effort is really worth it.