DUE Thursday, Mar 22 – 4 points
(Friday NOON deadline)

In this assignment we will be looking at the topic of usability, learning why it is important and how to test it.

• Usability 101: Definition and Fundamentals – What, Why, How
  This article by Jakob Nielsen provides a very good introduction to the topic of usability.

• User-centric Design
  This sixth chapter of the Website Owner’s Manual looks at how to test the usability of your web site.

Once you have completed the reading, you will need to take a quiz of ten true-false questions. (These questions will be randomly selected from the questions below. You can retake the quiz up to five times. Don’t stress about getting 100% on these quizzes: if you get 80% or better, you will be ready to proceed to the next activity and I will give you full credit.)

All questions should be prefaced with an understood, “According to the author of the material … “:

1. T/F? To make your web site more usable, you should provide an instructional manual to your site visitors.
2. T/F? On the web, leaving a web site is a user’s first line of defense when encountering a difficulty.
3. T/F? Usability is the most important quality attribute for a web site.
4. T/F? Usability is not that important on intranets because users (employees) cannot go to any other web sites to find the information they need.
5. T/F? Jakob Nielsen indicates that current best practices call for spending 2% of a design project’s budget on usability.
6. T/F? Jakob Nielsen recommends running many small usability tests instead of only one or two large and expensive tests.
7. T/F? Jakob Nielsen recommends focus groups as a good way to test usability.
8. T/F? Usability testing should start towards the end of a project, once the design phase is nearing completion.
9. T/F? Conducting good usability testing requires two-way mirrors, computer suites, and video cameras.
10. T/F? Paul discourages performing usability tests against design sketches because users will be too distracted by their unfinished nature.
11. T/F? Paul recommends using a content management system to construct wireframes for usability testing.
12. T/F? Steve Krug recommends performing usability tests with as few as 3 or 4 users.
13. T/F? Paul recommends testing users where they normally access the internet if possible.
14. T/F? Getting users to articulate their thoughts is fundamental to the success of a usability test session.
15. T/F? The facilitator conducting a usability test should answer all questions that the user has during the session to keep them from becoming frustrated.
16. T/F? Paul mentions two categories of questions used in usability testing, one of them asking users if they understand what they are seeing.
17. T/F? Paul mentions two categories of questions used in usability testing, one of them asking users to complete a specific task.
18. T/F? Usability testing almost always validates the approach the project team has taken.
19. T/F? Users’ comments about aesthetics and additional functionality are just as important during usability testing as their success completing tasks.
20. T/F? Paul provides the Wiltshire Farm Foods web site as an example demonstrating how business constraints sometimes need to come before usability considerations.
21. T/F? Paul suggests categorizing usability issues into three categories: “quick wins,” “deal breakers,” and “additional issues.”

DUE Thursday, Mar 22 – 4 points
(Friday NOON deadline)