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Coalville Web Designers
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Further Information on Web Designers
By spending time optimising a site's usability this will help to make it more accessible, or at least provide a better framework to build upon. If your audience finds the site hard to use, it'll almost certainly be difficult for those with disabilities or perhaps also learning difficulties. By the same reasoning, the amount of thought and consideration that goes into addressing accessibility is just as valid when it comes to usability.
Putting The User First
If you strip all the fancy stuff away from Web design, pages are ultimately being built for people to use. Forget showcasing every Flash gimmick you can gather from your accumulation of skills or bombarding people's browsers with bandwidth hogging images, and you're left with providing the best content delivery service you can offer. Before you even start generating ideas or beginning to think about firing up in your favorite web page editing software (real designers use notepad!), you should have it clear in your mind that usability is about putting the needs of the user first. Remembering that designing anything from shoes to sites is judged on how the final product performs. This will then help you conduct one of the most important stages in most design processes and especially software engineering: requirements elicitation, which sounds posh but just means getting the users needs. Most professional web development agencies will already be familiar with this procedure, and will use it to establish a stable understanding of what it is the user expects to see, with project success dependent upon meeting it. Whether you are being commissioned to create a site for a specific client or hope to launch something that will more directly attract traffic, it will be an necessary exercise to establish what the end user's expectations are. In fact one of the key points here is to ignore the word 'user'. Be more specific, customer, administrator, potential client etc.
Requirements Elicitation
The key point to remember about understanding user requirements is that you're unlikely to get them perfect the first time. This means that a continuous stream of communication throughout the design process is essential to getting as close to their expectations as possible. Talking to the users (clients, customers, administrators), recording what they say and trying to pin down exactly what they mean is the only sure-fire way to meet their needs. It's also important to bear in mind that the people you're designing for are not necessarily privy to the kind of 'developer speak' you might be comfortable using. This is where the production of graphical diagrams or descriptive case studies can be effectively used to portray how you see the project going. Navigational flowcharts, example site maps and perhaps data flow diagrams for eCommerce solutions are all good ways of presenting complex info without bewildering others with technical jargon. Of particular use are Use Case Diagrams. These are used by developers in establishing the functionality of the software and becuae of their simple nature are readily understood by clients. (Use case diagrams are part of the UML suite of visual modelling tools).
Similarly, there's no reason why a shared direction for the way visual elements are going can't be achieved with page mock ups or to give it its proper term: Rapid Prototyping. Flat digital drawings of possible template designs can be put forward and scrutinised, before a period of prototyping more sophisticated page elements, interfaces and navigational structures gets under way.
Professional Assistance
If you're not overly keen on carrying out widespread usability studies yourself, or perhaps realise that it isn't viable, you can always rely on the services of others. Professional consultancies or specialist agencies are numerous and common. They typically offer a range of complete solutions that span all the major processes. Usually they will also give your site a primary evaluation to ascertain whether it really requires the full usability treatment, and how best to pursue everything. it then really comes down to identifying what needs and goals are motivating the Web site, or establishing what it's expected to achieve. This can lead to a detailed investigation and analysis of what the target socio-ecomonomic demographic will be, so a cross section of the audience group can be studied. A sample of 'typical users' will usually be asked to attend testing sessions that will observe participants as they experience the site. This can range from simply asking them to navigate through the content freely for a certain length of time, to setting them certain tasks and scenarios. While encouraged to 'think aloud' at all times, their feedback is monitored and recorded either by sophisticated tracking software or by video. Even simple monitoring such as counting the number of clicks it takes a user to fullfill a task will provide beneficial feedback. Typically the less clicks the better! Designers may be encouraged to sit in on the sessions and hear how users perceive the site, and perhaps whatever improvements they might suggest. At the finish, all participants are asked to submit their overall impressions of the site during thorough structured interview sessions. All the findings are then reviewed, analysed and then compilled into detailed reports that will form the foundation of any future design revisions and new projects that arise from the findings.
User Surveys
When rounding together a sample of your website users isn't really a realistic option, there are numerous other ways of getting both quantitative and qualitative feedback. Many sites will include email addresses or contact forms so visitors can submit their thoughts, but this doesn't ensure that you'll receive the kind of response you want. It can be more beneficial to provide electronic questionnaires that will ga