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UZilla.org

Website usability

Usability is one of the main software quality characteristics. When applied to a user interface, usability specifies the ease of use of the given interface. There are many modeling techniques, taken from the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) field of study, that are useful in:-

  • Specifying usability requirements.
  • Designing for usability.
  • Measuring the presence of usability.

    At UZilla.org this HCI information is presented, including theories and best practices, with the aim of giving practical advise to website designers seeking to provide website's that have a strong usability characteristic. This advice is given in the form of website usability articles.

    Website usability versus website functionality

    The functionality of any object, including a website, is the essential purpose of the given object. A website's functionality is represented by the set of functions that the website provides. Consider Amazon.com: we could say the functions of Amazon.com are:-

  • To browse available books
  • To buy books

    Although this is a simplistic definition of the functions of the Amazon website, they will suffice for our definition. The basic function of browsing books could be satisfied via a complete list of all the thousands of books available. An unsorted list of books would satisfy the functional requirement of Browse books, clearly some additional requirements need to be satisfied to make the website useful. These additional requirements, sometimes referred to as non-functional requirements include usability. Such requirements would include the order in which the books appear or a drill down option into more information on the Author or other pertinent information. On the buy a book usability Amazon has the famous one click buy option, which is a usability characteristic. Both functionality and usability for part of the FURPS model which is a model of software requirements that is relevant to software quality assurance. In general the fewer number of clicks to achieve a given function the better.

    HCI considerations for website usability

    The previous example of number of clicks is one of many website usability factors that could be specified, coded and tested. There are other factors that come from HCI that also govern the overall usability of a website, these factors include:-

  • How much information does the user have to hold to make sense of the navigation and current context?
  • What is the target audience for the website?
  • Is the user Semantic level model of the website consistent?
  • Is the Syntactic level model of the website consistent?
  • Is the Interaction level model of the website consistent?

    All of the above questions, and more, are answered by digging deeper into the world of HCI in order to model the user interaction with a website. Many of the models, such as the ones listed in the questions above, are still being researched and developed.

    HCI and in particular website usability are relatively new subjects in the technology world and this area of website design and testing is discussed in our articles.

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