In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Usability Studies is a short article by Jakob Nielsen entitled Usability for the Masses in which Nielsen suggests that usability needs to packaged “so that it can be fruitfully applied by swarming masses of part-timers.”

His logic goes like this:

1. There are 100x more websites than there are usability professionals.
2. Most websites are designed according to the designer’s taste with little or no usability testing.
3. Websites are 2x as successful (often measured in sales) if usability testing is done.

Conclusion:

• Extend the work on discount usability engineering to create ultra-discounted methods

In other words, rather than trying to ramp up the number of usability professionals to one million (from the current 10,000), bring usability testing to the masses by developing specific usability guidelines that are easy for practioners to apply. Until usability is easy, quick, and cheap, most companies will continue to avoid it.

Nielsen is absolutely right. People are not doing usability testing and it is because its too dang hard and ridiculously expensive. I recently tried to hire a usability professional for a website project and was told that she wouldn’t be available to do the job for three months (proving there not enough usability professionals) and that it would then take at least a month to do the work and would cost my client at least $20,000. The entire project for the website was budgeted for $20,000. So guess what? No usability testing.

Nielsen puts out this call to usability professionals and researchers of the world:

Usability needs to be simplfied even more and made even more actionable. There is a full research agenda here, and we better get started finding the answers, because it is already too late.

Amen.

In her 1996 article entitled Why Are Online Catalogs Still Hard to Use? (Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47(7):493-503, 1996), Christine Borgman discusses the fact that OPACs are used for “querying” when in fact what the public needs is a tool that facilitates the complete process of “information seeking.” She explains that researchers have found that “users formulate questions in stages, gradually coming to the point where they can begin to articulate a query.” She goes on to say that the search process should be iterative so that “searching may serve to refine the question rather than build a set of documents that matches an explicit query.”

When catalogs were computerized, they were developed for information professionals. Back then, the librarian served as the intermediary between the catalog and the user and the librarian’s job was to conduct the reference interview and then, having identified the information need, construct a query responsive to that need.

But somewhere along the way, we have moved away from that model of librarian as intermediary and the tools originally designed for professionals are now in the hands of “perpetual novices” (Borgman, 1996). You see, vendors know how to leverage their products. They took the interface designed for professionals, added some neat new graphical elements like buttons and dropdown menus, labelled it an OPAC, put a big fat pricetag on it and bingo the public interface was delivered. [Addendum...one vendor is actually trying to do something completely different that is more responsive to user seeking behavior...checkout TLC's AquaBrowser.]

So, what happened to that all important step of the reference interview in this new OPAC world? Hmmmm, bye-bye.

But at what point is it the responsibility of the information professionals to demand that the vendors actually design an OPAC for users. An OPAC that doesn’t presume that our users are information professionals. That doesn’t presume that our users are English speakers with a college education. That doesn’t presume that our users have perfect vision and use of all their limbs. That doesn’t presume that people understand Boolean logic or authority lists or how the author field is populated. And my personal favorite…doesn’t presume that people understand the difference between a keyword and subject heading.

We need an OPAC that is designed for our users. An OPAC that is intuitive and easy-to-use, based on universal design principles and which doesn’t disregard information seeking behaviors. But if librarians don’t demand it, it ain’t gonna happen. Let’s stop letting the vendors determine what products libraries use and start demanding what we want.

Here’s some ideas:

• Include details of what we want in our system in RFPs rather than using RFPs to describe existing products.
• Conduct user testing of interfaces and publicize the results.
• Encourage librarians to become system designers.
• Write Help Documentation for users that addresses the design shortfalls of the OPAC.
• Train users whenever you can.

I just discovered an excellent resource for everyone involved in website design, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Research-based Web Design and Usability Guidelines (2003).

Each chapter (available as a separate PDF) focuses on a component such as Design Process and Evaluation, Accessibility, The Homepage, Page Layout, Navigation, Content Organization, etc. There are 17 chapters.

In addition to the guideline itself, each entry includes a comment section, source and usually an excellent example for how to apply the guideline.

Sample entry (no example with this one):

The website provides many ways to access the information including the downloadable chapters, one PDF file of the whole book and a sortable view of each guideline by relative importance, chapter, strength of evidence (research) and relative score.

In his March 14, 2005 Alertbox article Lower-Literacy Users, Jakob Nielsen reports that the reading behaviors of lower-literacy users is different from higher-literacy users and offers up some suggestions for website designers.

Unlike higher-literacy users, lower-literacy users cannot scan text. Instead, they must read word for word. Nielsen describes this process as ?plowing? the text. When plowing text, users are unlikely to notice elements of the page outside of the text because their field of view is so narrow.

They are also unable to scan navigational aids to select the one most appropriate for their need. Instead, they must consider each option one at a time, or to simply skip over numerous items when the options become overwhelming.

Lower-literacy users also tend to skip over text when it becomes too dense. Scrolling is also problematic because the ability to keep track of where one is on the page as it scrolls down requires scanning, which lower-literacy users cannot do.

Another problem is the search box. If the search box requires perfect spelling, it is unlikely that a lower-literacy user will have much success.

Nielsen provides suggestions for making a website more manageable for lower-literacy users including the following:

? Simplify the text.
? Prioritize information
? Avoid text that moves or changes
? Streamline the page design
? Simplify navigation
? Optimize search

Simplify the text: Nielsen recommends making the text on the home page to a 6th grade reading level. Other pages should not exceed an 8th grade reading level.

Prioritize information: To prioritize information means to put the most important information at the very top of the page. While this is consistent with usability guidelines for all users, it is important to utilize the first two lines because lower-literacy users are likely to give up after plowing through the first two lines of text. Nielsen recommends eliminating scrolling entirely (which will benefit both teenage users and lower-literacy users).

Avoid text that moves or changes:Animations and fly-out menus are particularly difficult for lower-literacy users and should be avoided. Nielsen points out that these features are also problematic for international users and users with motor skill impairments.

Streamline the page design: Nielsen recommends steering clear of multiple column layouts because a single main column will make it easier for the lower-literacy user to pick out design elements. He notes that this type of simplified design will also benefit the users viewing the site via a handheld device such as their phone or PDA.

Simplify navigation: The simplest form of navigation is when the main choices are placed linearly in a menu bar. Again, the goal is to avoid the need to scan the page looking for navigational elements.

Optimize search: Nielsen recommends adding features that make the search box more forgiving of people who might not be able to spell the item they are seeking or are more inclined to make typos. This includes seniors and lower-literacy users. Spell-check, stemming, truncation, and fuzzy searches are some of the ways a search box can be made more user friendly.

Nielsen argues that making web sites more usable for lower-literacy users will make them more usable for higher literacy users as well. He provides documentation to prove the accuracy of his hypothesis.

As institutions very much involved in promoting literacy, it is important that library websites address the needs of lower-literacy users.

Every library should evaluate their site to ensure that their website is free of characteristics that are particularly difficult for lower-literacy users including confusing layout, sophisticated or text-heavy pages, or required scrolling to get to the most important links. While implementing advanced search features is challenging, all the other suggestions are easy-to-implement and every library will should see about incorporating them immediately.