Usability

The case study that was provided on Health and Human services website was a very good example on how to test the usability of the website. It was interesting to see exactly which parts of the website were not user friendly on the image on page 47. I think that people generally go towards the search bar first on a web page, especially if they are not finding what they are looking for, so it is helpful to see that on the initial webpage in this study that the search bar was missed. Along with people not noticing that there was a search bar, they also thought that a drop down bar titled, "select a topic" was a search function. It shows that the average website user can often be almost absent minded when searching a page. It almost seems that a user's expectations are so high of web usability that they expect they know what things are, such as the search button, without absorbing what they actually say.

They was a section I want to touch on that talked about what lessons were learned from the case study. The lesson I want to specifically mention is the one that reads, "Someone has to be in charge to keep the home page (and the rest of the site) focused on your users' needs and your business goals." I think that this lesson is the most important one to keep in mind because since things are always changing, and mostly always finding ways to become more readable and usable, web designers need to make sure they are always checking with clients or staff to make sure that the page is still as usable as it can be. For example, approximately every three months facebook changes up the layout of the page. Although users often react annoyed for the first few days because they are now using something they are not familiar with, in the long run the new set up usually becomes favored because it has been adapted to what is now more usable.

Overall, I think that high website usability is key because it determines whether or not a user is going to keep coming back the site.