One of the things I do at the Museums and the Web conference each year is to run the “usability lab,” a session of very short usability analyses of museum websites. Designed to introduce museum and information professionals to the principles of usability analysis in thirty minutes or less, the usability lab employs a “game show” approach to user testing, relying on audience volunteers to test museum websites suggested by conference attendees in front of a live audience with no advance preparation by evaluators. For details on the analysis method, see: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_7/marty/
As an example of the kind of issues explored in this lab, consider the following scenario of use: a sixth-grade student, writing a paper about penguins, remembers that the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has an excellent penguin habitat, and heads for the Shedd’s website to see what information they have online about penguins. When we tested this scenario at the conference, the volunteer test user immediately spotted the “animals” link at the top of the page, and scrolled through the list of animals on that page looking for penguins.
But when he scrolled all the way down to P, there were no penguins (see attached screenshot)! This was very distressing, and the volunteer even wondered if the fact that the physical Penguin Habitat was temporarily closed meant that they had removed any information about penguins from the website!
As it turns out, the penguins (and all animals) are entered in the list with initial adjectives, and sorted that way, so that penguins are listed under Gentoo Penguins or Rockhopper Penguins, but not under Penguins!
Of course, one quick and dirty user test does not confirm this as an actual usability problem, but at the very least the problems inherent to seeing only a few animals at a time in the scroll box on that page, as well as the potential difficulties posed by the chosen classification scheme, may warrant future testing to see whether the majority of the Shedd’s online visitors have difficulties finding information about penguins or other animals on this page.
May 3rd, 2006 09:22
I have attended the Museums and the Web Conference and particularly enjoyed the usability lab. It is a reminder that we museum ‘insiders’ need to step out of the back rooms and see our spaces, real or virtual (yes I know virtual is real!) through the eyes of our visitors. Yes you can look at the site logs or tracking statistics, but there is no substitute for watching someone struggle to navigate through a confusing or busy web site and not find the information they seek. And we al know, they often won’t revisit. I wonder if MW could have some sort of follow up, where they highlight improvements that people have made to their sites as a result of the usability lab.
May 4th, 2006 06:44
We actually have discussed this — and I think there would be a lot of interest for doing this in the future. It’s certainly a great idea!!!