[thelist] Usability: Empirically Validated Web Page Design Metrics
Marlene Bruce
marlene at digitizethis.com
Thu Nov 15 14:31:23 CST 2001
Hey all,
I went to a BAY-CHI lecture last night, and the presentation (by
Marti Hearst) was on "WebTANGO - Automating Web Site Usability
Evaluation" (Empirically Validated Web Page Design Metrics). While
the tool is not yet finished (the research is already extensive--in
it's third round--even though there are some significant issues they
still have to work out), some of the preliminary results they found
was that the more usable sites have the following (I should stress
they're preliminary):
* Smaller minimum color usage (like two main colors and one accent)
* No italics
* Clustered links
* There were "good" ads on good sites, "bad" ones on bad (reputable
ads correlated with respectable sites)
* More interactive objects (like search buttons)
* The most Bobby and WebLint errors! (this correlates to the number
of interactive objects, tables, etc.)
These results were from examining 5346 pages on 333 sites (in 6
content categories) against 157 quantitative measures. The sites they
used were ones being judged by Webby Award judges, and the results of
the WebTANGO automated evaluation (good, average, and poor sites
and/or pages) were correlated against the results of the Webby
judges. The average correlation accuracy ranged from 70.70% to 82.75%.
I think this stuff is fabulous, if only because they are results from
studies, rather than opinions bourne from supposition or ego (when I
spoke to Marti afterwards and mentioned Nielsen, she responded by
indicating that his recommendations used to result from empirical
studies, but are much less so now that he's busy giving lectures ...
and further that at least some of his recommendations aren't
supported by the WebTANGO studies, hmm...). Historically I've
respected much of Nielsen's work (though I've found "Designing Web
Usability" to be helpful and informative, I was disappointed that
there were very little academics indicated to back his
recommendations, and no bibliography ... but I'm *not* trying to make
this a Nielsen good vs. bad discussion).
Anyway, if you care to learn more: http://webtango.berkeley.edu/.
Cheers,
Marlene
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