Usability Driven Website Design An Equine Sports Case Study

Transcription

1 Usability Driven Website Design An Equine Sports Case Study Rebecca Wilkins 1, Abel Nyamapfene 2 School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics University of Exeter, UK rw249@exeter.ac.uk 1 ; a.nyamapfene@ex.ac.uk 2 Abstract There is considerable anecdotal evidence that equine sports enthusiasts in Devon and Cornwall still shun equine event search websites in preference to traditional information sources such as newspapers, magazines and word of mouth. On this basis, we have carried out a usability analysis of key equine event search websites serving Devon and Cornwall. This analysis suggests that these websites are designed in ways that make them unfriendly and unwelcoming to prospective users. As a follow-up to this analysis, we have used Shneiderman s eight golden rules for interface design to develop a prototype search website. Tests carried out with participants drawn from the target user group suggest that this prototype website outperforms the currently leading equine event search website in Devon and Cornwall. This leads us to conclude that website design and development should be guided at all times by usability principles. 1. Introduction Equine sports are extremely popular in the South West of England (Devon and Cornwall) with an average of 2 equine sporting events taking place each week and with average attendances of 2 people per event. Such high attendances point to a vibrant, well-defined audience, and entrepreneurs have been quick to develop websites to cater for the information needs of equine enthusiasts in and around Devon and Cornwall. However, despite the proliferation of websites focussing on equine sport in Devon and Cornwall, the World Wide Web has spectacularly failed to make its presence felt in this market which is still dominated by traditional information sources such as newspapers, magazines, leaflets and word of mouth. Informal surveys carried out by the authors suggest that the majority of people generally find the available websites to be overly complex, inadequate and user-unfriendly. Whilst this may be due to issues like people s familiarity with traditional information sources a contributory factor may well be poor website design. To investigate this issue, we carried out a usability assessment of the websites targeting equine enthusiasts in Devon and Cornwall, and on the basis of this study we developed a prototype website and evaluated it against the currently leading website in terms of user hits. According to Nielsen [1] website usability involves the ease with which the user can learn to manage the site and memorise the basic functions, the efficiency of design of the site, the degree of error avoidance and the general satisfaction of the user. Usability is not just a surface gloss that can be applied at the end of the website design and implementation cycle. Rather, usability has to be built in from the beginning [2]. This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 summarises the usability assessment we carried out on the top three equine sport websites in Devon and Cornwall whilst Section 3 discusses our website design approach. In Section 4 we report on our website evaluation using test participants drawn from equine sports enthusiasts in Devon and Cornwall. Lastly we conclude the paper by pointing out what we think are the key findings from our research with respect to website design approaches as well as indicating the direction in which our research on website design is taking. 2. Usability analysis of current equine sport websites Shneiderman [3] has proposed eight golden rules for guiding developers in user friendly interface. These rules are: 1. Strive for consistency. 2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts. 3. Offer informative feedback. 4. Design dialogues to yield closure. 5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling. 6. Permit easy reversal of actions. 7. Support internal locus of control. 8. Reduce short-term memory load.

2 We have used these rules as a basis for evaluating the usability of the three most popular equestrian websites in Devon and Cornwall. The three websites are The Web South West () [4], Equine Tourism [5] and The Riding Diary [6]. As suggested by our discussions with equine sports enthusiasts in and around Devon and Cornwall, The appears to be, by far, the most popular equine event search website at the present moment quickly moving on to other websites without getting what they were looking for. 2.1 The Web South West website Figure 2. The Riding Diary Homepage Figure 1. The Web South West Homepage The Web South West website [Figure 1] allows users to look up horse events and competitions whilst also offering other facilities such as holiday attractions and classified links. Positive aspects for this site are that the layout of web pages is fairly consistent throughout the site, and the visibility and clarity of web pages have been enhanced by appropriate use of white space. However, the website lacks a clearly defined content structure which tends to confuse site users, especially those who are new to the site. This is further compounded by the lack of help facilities on site which makes the website particularly challenging for novice users. Navigational links and a search facility have been used as the primary methods for information access. The site uses terms and acronyms that are easily understood by equine sports enthusiasts as link titles. Whilst this makes the website user-friendly, the lack of supporting information to guide navigation and search makes it difficult for users who are not familiar with the site. Nevertheless, search methods employed by the site are well formatted and easy to understand. Drop down menus are used, which is a good approach as it limits the errors that can occur because the users can only select certain options and won t make any typing errors. However, the user can press the Go button without selecting any options and the website simply refreshes the page without issuing any error messages. This will not educate users, and could mean that they continue to make the same mistake. As stated by Ravden and Johnson [7], Users should be given clear, informative feedback on what actions they have taken and whether these actions have been successful. Overall, the Riding Diary website offers highquality functionality. However it is not user friendly to users who are unfamiliar with the site. 2.3 The Equine Tourism website 2.2 The Riding Diary website The Riding Diary [Figure 2] is a site that allows users to search for equestrian events all over the UK. The fonts used for titles are not distinct from those used for ordinary text. Navigation bars are also affected by lack of contrast. In addition, the site makes little use of white space. All this means that a user visiting the site has to take time to get acquainted with the site. This may result in users Figure 3. The Equine Tourism Homepage The Equine Tourism website [Figure 3] is not solely about equestrian events. It also offers other equine related choices and is quoted by Your Horse magazine as An extremely useful site for all things

3 horse. The website has a clear title and a good colour scheme. The main part of the homepage includes a lot of links which could bore, confuse and affect the user s attention. Moreover, the homepage extends beyond the screen, meaning that the user must scroll down to see all the displayed information, which is not good usability [8]. Most importantly, the search facility appears to be limited as it only allows users to search for events by region or by calendar month. These two search options result in the website displaying a huge table which the user has to scroll through in order to get the required information. The site is popular with its users once they have gained experience on it. However, for a first time user however this is not the case, as he/she would need time to understand the website and learn how to navigate through it. Our analysis of these three websites would seem to suggest that they have not been designed with visitors and new users in mind. Whilst they may be useable by experienced users, all the three websites present formidable challenges for the new user. This may be a significant reason why most equine sports enthusiasts shun available websites in preference for well established traditional information sources like newspapers, magazines, leaflets and word of mouth. Clearly, usability driven website design would make websites more welcoming to new users, thereby encouraging more users to make more use of websites for their informational requirements. 3. Usability driven prototype website development We have developed a prototype website for assessment against currently existing websites. Our approach follows the golden rules proposed by Shneiderman [3]. These rules have enabled us to pay adequate attention to all the key aspects of a website such as the website s content and structure, visual organisation, navigational design, website interactivity and website response time. Equine sports are spectator family-friendly events which draw people of all ages and social classes. Consequently, people who are expected to make use of equine sport websites range from the highly computer literate to those with minimal computer literacy. On the basis of their research on the search abilities of students with varying computer literacy, Wecker et al [9] concluded that both experienced and non-experienced website users benefited significantly if the information on the website is clearly laid out and easy to find. In the design of our prototype we ensured that this was done by making sure that titles and links clearly stand out from ordinary text, and that related information is organised into clear and distinct groups. To further enhance clarity and improve navigation, all the page and link titles on our web page are words that many equine sports enthusiasts are familiar with. In addition, we have further minimised user cognitive load by limiting each title to no more than six words [1] and selecting as link titles words that help users to accurately predict where they will end up if they click on a link. Also, we provided feedback for most of the search operations to ensure that users do not get stranded when an operation fails. To ensure that our website is user friendly we have tried to simplify how users can navigate around the website. Since our website has a limited number of pages we have opted for navigation buttons positioned alongside associated text instead of the traditional navigation menu bar. In our navigation scheme, the relative importance of each button is related to the size of the button. Larger buttons have more relative importance than smaller buttons. For instance, the Search button on the homepage is far larger than any of the other buttons in the site. This button is the most important button as it submits the relevant search criteria to the database, thereby supplying the user with the desired results. Since equine sports are mass spectator events, we also ensured that our prototype website would have features that appeal to people with disabilities as well. For instance, we have made use of drop down boxes to ensure that people do not have to type in the information they are looking for. This speeds up search operations and allows people with spelling difficulties to still get access to the information they require. In addition, we have attempted to keep the website design as simple as possible. As determined by Gappa & Nordbrock studies on disabled users and web usability [11], this is a factor regarded highly by the disabled. The text font throughout our prototype website is large and clear, and we have ensured that the website colour scheme provides high contrast between the text and the background, thus increasing the legibility of the information. Consistency is also a very important aspect of the site design, as it can greatly increase the speed of learning, improve efficiency and effectiveness of human-computer interaction, and significantly reduce the likelihood of errors [7]. We have ensured consistency by ensuring that web pages on our site have the same look and feel, navigation buttons are placed in similar locations on the different pages, and error messages for similar tasks are phrased and formatted in a similar manner. We have also attempted to provide our website users with a satisfactory search experience by ensuring that our website is both responsive and interactive. With reference to interactivity, we have deliberately ensured that the homepage gives very little prior information to the user. Rather, users are

4 encouraged to select search criteria straight away, thereby making them interact with the site. This approach has been found to engage users attention, and increase their involvement with the website, leading to enriched experiences [12]. With regard to responsiveness, we have used very few images on our website so as to minimise download time. It is important to design web pages with speed in mind since users often associate long response times with poor service [1]. We have also involved the targeted user group throughout the design and development of the website. Users are more familiar with their requirements than the developers and they can point out aspects of the website that need to be redesigned. For instance, throughout the website development, test participants were asked to use the website and questioned on their thoughts and feelings about it. This led to small, continuous changes such as the font used in the logo, allowing users to search for any event in any location, and increasing the size of the Search button relative to the Add an Event button. Figure 4 illustrates the main search page designed in accordance with the ideas discussed in this section. Figure 4. Homepage of the prototype website 4. Website evaluation and discussion Nielsen and Landauer s Curve [13] suggests that 12 to 15 participants are sufficient to determine all the usability problems in a usability test. Accordingly, we have used twelve equine sports enthusiasts to evaluate our website against, which is currently the most preferred website. Our logic for selecting the website over the other two websites is that since it is by far the most popular equine event search website at the present moment then, by default, it has the best overall usability features that appeal to the targeted user group. These twelve people are not part of the user group involved in the development and testing o our website, and all of them had had no exposure to both our website and the website, and had no idea of which website belonged to us. The 12 participants ranged in age from 13 to 56 and their standard of education ranged from secondary school, college level and university education level. For each website, each participant filled out a questionnaire, and carried out two search tasks under observation. Incorporating tasks into the evaluation alongside the questionnaires enables the test participants to be exposed to as many aspects of the website as possible. This is necessary if the participants are to comment usefully, and in detail, on the website s specific features, problems, strengths and deficiencies [7]. The two tasks that participants carried out under observation were: Go to the website homepage and find a hunter trial to go to in Cornwall on the 15 th March 29. Where is it? Stay on the site and list all the events that are occurring on the 13 th April 29. With regard to the first task, all the test participants managed to find the correct answer in less than a minute using our website. In comparison, all the participants took much longer to find the correct answer using. For instance, one participant took five minutes to find the answer, whilst another took ten minutes and only managed to do so after soliciting for help. With regard to task two there were actually four events occurring on the 13 th April 29. All participants managed to find all the four answers on our website. This is in contrast to where only one participant managed to find all the four events, with the rest managing to find three events out of four. This may suggest that our website is better organised and has a clearer navigational structure than. The questionnaire was divided into two parts; the first part evaluated the participants computer literacy whilst the second part evaluated the usability of the two websites under evaluation, namely our website and the website. When test participants were asked for a self evaluation of their own computer literacy, 3 rated themselves as very good, 5 as good, 2 as average, 1 as poor and the final participant rated himself as having very poor computer literacy skills. This distribution, typified by a significant number of computer literate people and others with little or no computer literacy, is consistent with the target user group, which comprises computer-savvy young people as well as the elderly who may never had the opportunity or inclination to improve their computing skills. The evaluation also established that 11 of the participants have been using computers for more than 3 years, whilst 1 had less than 3 years of computer use. Seven of the participants use the

5 Internet for more than 5 hours per week with only one stating that he accessed the Internet for less than 1 hour a week. These finding suggest that the target audience are generally computer literate and quite familiar with the Internet. The second part of the questionnaire was to evaluate usability. It consists of 19 questions per website, which fall into these four categories; Visual clarity, consistency, informative feedback and aesthetic appeal. With regard to visual clarity, a good website should make the screen appear uncluttered and enable the user to find the required information quickly and easily. It should also draw the user s attention to important information and enable users to see and read information on the screen clearly and effortlessly [7]. The responses for each visual clarity response category were summed together and expressed as a percentage of the total number of responses [Figure 5]. The graph clearly suggests that the participants perceived our website to have more superior visual clarity when compared to. For instance, whilst responses tended to be predominantly positive for our website, they were mostly negative for the website. Visual Clarity R es p o n se s Informative feedback Always Most of the time Some of the time Never Responses to: Does the web site give clear informative feedback Figure 7. Test participants responses to the queries on the quality of the two websites feedback, expressed as a percentage of total responses. Resp on se Very satisfactory Moderately satisfactory Aesthetic appeal Neutral Moderately unsatisfactory Response to: Overall how would you rate the web site Very unsatisfactory Responses Always Most of the time Some of the time Never Responses to: Is the information displayed on the screen clear, well organised, unambigious and easy to read Figure 5. Test participants responses to the queries on the two websites visual clarity, expressed as a percentage of total responses. Responses Consistency Always Most of the time Some of the time Never Responses to: Is the web site consistent at all times Figure 6. Test participants responses to the queries on the two websites consistency, expressed as a percentage of total responses. Figure 8. Test participants assessment of the aesthetic appeal of the two websites Again, with regard to consistency, test participants rated our website more highly than the website, as shown by the totalled percentage responses in Figure 6. Figure 7 shows the totalled percentage responses to the informative feedback section in the questionnaire. From the graph it is clear that most test participants thought that our website always offers informative feedback. In contrast, responses for the website were fairly evenly distributed across all the categories. Evidently, our site is better suited at letting users learn and understand how to interact with it better than the website. Finally test participants were asked how they would rate the website overall. As shown in Figure 8 all the test participants felt that our website was very satisfactory. In contrast, received poor overall ratings, with no positive responses at all, and with half of the participants describing it as moderately unsatisfactory, and a further one third describing it as very unsatisfactory. On the basis of this assessment it can be concluded that our website outperformed the website on all the aspects that were evaluated. Both websites were constructed using the same Web technologies, and, possibly, the only difference was

6 that the design and development of our website was entirely driven by usability requirements. 5. Concluding Remarks Whilst gaining competence in web technologies is universally viewed as a much easier task than gaining competence in industry-standard programming languages such as Java and C++, the research described in this paper suggests that just like any software development project, the process of website development should be based upon well established software engineering methodologies if the resulting website is to deliver effectively on its requirements. We have attempted to do this by following well established website usability principles, and, in line with software engineering methodologies, we have relied on extensive user input throughout the whole design, development and testing cycle, and the results speak for themselves. Whilst our website is a simple web application whose primary role is to provide search functionality, we are aware that as the Internet has evolved, Web application development has increased in complexity as corporate software systems such as financial systems, supply chain management and transaction processing systems have migrated to the Internet. However, the process of web application development is still largely ad hoc, leading to costly poor performance and failure [14]. We are currently extending our work to the analysis of corporate web application design and development cycles with a view to coming up with a software engineering methodology that is applicable to web application development. 6. References [1] J. Nielsen, Usability Engineering, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, Reading, Mass., Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman, [4] Web South West. Available at: (Accessed: 6 March 29). [5] Equine Tourism. Available at (Accessed: 2 March 29) [6] The Riding Diary. Available at (Accessed: 2 March 29) [7] S. J Ravden and G. I. Johnson, Evaluating Usability of Human-Computer Interfaces: A Practical Method, Chichester, England: Wiley, [8] J. Nielsen and M. Tahir, Homepage Usability: 5 Websites Deconstructed, Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing, 21. [9] C. Wecker, C. Kohnle, and F. Fischer, Computer literacy and inquiry learning: when geeks learn less, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, pp , 27. [1] J. Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing, 2. [11] H. Gappa, and G. Nordbrock, Applying Web accessibility to Internet portals, Universal Access in the Information Society, 24, pp [12] H. Teo, L. Oh, C. Liu, and K. Wei, An empirical study of the effects of interactivity on web user attitude, Human-Computer Studies, 22, pp [13] J. Nielsen and T.K. Landauer, A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems. Proceedings of INTERCHI 93, New York, NY: ACM, 1993, pp [14] A. Ginige and S. Murugesan, Guest Editors' Introduction: Web Engineering - An Introduction, IEEE Multimedia 8(1), 21, pp [2] J.S. Dumas and J.C. Redish, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Norwood: Ablex Publishing Co., [3] B. Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction,