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Congratulations! This is a free usability
review from UsabilityInstitute.com. "Usability" refers
to how easy and effective it is to use a Web site. Although it involves
how a site looks (graphic artwork), it is primarily concerned with
how a site works, what you click on, what happens, and whether the
site does its job.
- Perhaps
this review is all you need to improve your site. If that's the
case, great. Please mention UsabilityInstitute.com if you talk
with others who need help with their site. (Bookmark
this site)
- On the other hand, if you would like to put some of these recommendations
into action on your site, or get a more detailed analysis, contact
us.
The following three sections provide a general
analysis of your website from a relatively quick review. Although
Web design is still perceived as a highly creative endeavor, there
are many aspects of it that call for standardization and compliance
with widely established conventions. Implementing even a few of
the ideas below can really improve a site.
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This
first section is intended for typical public web sites (for
products and corporate information), but also applies for
the most part to intranets and software applications that
run in a browser. We've been advocating many of these ideas—in
the context of general software—since our 1997 book,
Computers Stink, but they've been beautifully enumerated
for WWW purposes in Steve Krug's book, "Don't Make
Me Think." |
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CompSci |
CIS |
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Click
for explanation |
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Hover
for explanation |
Comments |
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A1. |
Logo
in top left, linked to home |
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CIS's puts the university
link leftmost, which is just as well for the structured
thinker. |
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A2. |
Tagline |
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A3. |
Welcome
blurb |
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It's
not a foregone conclusion that an aspiring highschool senior
would know the difference between the two. CIS should move
the two key sentences from the About page to the home page. |
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A4. |
Plain
wording |
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Three minor demerits
for Compsci's wording, "Savvy Search," even if
it is the vendor's actual name. Otherwise no interpretation
was needed on either site. |
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A5. |
No
'happy talk' |
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Just the fact, ma'am. |
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A6. |
Concise
wording |
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Slight
edge to the algorithmic guys. They're probably too busy
debugging Windows to even make up any fluffy wording. |
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A7. |
Visited
pages are distinguished by link color-coding |
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Another
win for the men in black. Too many CIS links are "stylized"
so much that the default HTML color coding is eliminated.
Of the links I tried, only the News links indicated visitation. |
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A8. |
"Utilities"
are easy to find |
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To
know what the true utilities are I'd need to study what
the typical tasks are. |
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A9. |
Search
on all pages, with box and button |
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Put the box right
on the page. The compsci guys can write their own, but for
the rest of us, try a public service like picosearch.com. |
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A10. |
"You
Are Here" indicator |
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Compsci breaks out
of the whole template (to plain pages) for subpages, so
there's no indication whatsoever. In CIS, clicking Undergrad/Student
Life, the Undergrad highlight disappears. Slight edge to
CIS. (I guess I'll have to move all of my "?"
boxes to the left one, huh?) |
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A11. |
Breadcrumbs'
as links |
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Breadcrumbs
aren't used. These sites, like most university sites are
cobbled together, which makes breadcrumbs really tough to
regiment. |
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0/1/5/3/1/1 |
0/0/4/4/2/1 |
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Students and Professional Developers:
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Don't spend time and money designing the look and styles...
there's more than you think involved! Instead, use GenericUI,
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and indefinite trial use.
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Do your hands ache after a day at the keyboard??? This review sponsored
by...
Summation & Next Steps
Overall Ratings:
CompSci:Strives
/
Survives /
Thrives
CIS: Strives
/
Survives /
Thrives
Both sites get the job done and should be
a great resource for their audience. A common theme with other
university sites emerges with the difficulty of balancing two
navigational needs: rich categorical depth vs. per-audience
searching. Some simple fixes can improve both sites without
an architect. CompSci comes off looking very slightly better
by our meaningless tally—for sticking to basics—but
has a little more work to do, regrouping the main navigation
a little and integrating unformatted pages. A tool like Dreamweaver
can now retroactively apply templates so some of this can be
done in a "single action."
Hope this helps and let me know
what you think,
Jack Bellis, UsabilityInstitute.com
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