A case study of usability testing of chosen sites (banks, daily newspapers, insurances)

Abstract In this paper we argue in favor of usability considerations and usability testing in general andin the case of the WWW in particular. Based on related work in the field of WWW usabilitytesting, we present a usability evaluation of selected Austrian web sites of the three areas ofindustry: banks, daily newspapers, and insurances. Accordingly, methods like scenario-basedtesting were applied in this empirical web usability study. We present the results for the twocriteria, navigation and graphics, and reveal general tendencies. Keywords usability, web usability, usability testing, design mistakes, scenario-based testing Introduction As the potentialities of the web continue to expand (e.g. HTML extensions, VRML, Java) sitedesigners are becoming overwhelmed by a proliferation of functioning interaction techniques.However, when a technology is possible, it does not implicate that this technology is alsodesirable, nor that it is being incorporated in a productive manner.Web site usability affects millions of users on a daily basis. Most users have low tolerance foranything that either did not work, that was too complicated, or that they did not like. In the caseof other user interfaces than WWW, the technically oriented user would normally persist forsome time in trying to figure out how to use the system. But in the WWW the user would notwant to visit a site again after a quite small number of problems, because there are so many sitesout there that users generally have very little patience. Therefore first impressions areimportant, especially for organizations selling products on the net.Many web sites have become cluttered with useless and confusing new features. Theseobservations lead to the assumption that the demands for good usability are probably higher forWWW user interfaces than for other user interfaces.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces usability ofinteractive systems in general and testing of usability aspects. In section 3 we present a briefoverview of related work in the field of WWW usability testing. Section 4 outlines two majormethods for usability testing. This is followed by a case-study from selected web sites includingscenario-based testing of sites, results and a summary. Finally, in section 6 we present generalresults and conclusions.