Usability Reviews

Vyatta

2007-06-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

This is the home page of Vyatta Website:

I think in this page some information slow down my pace to think.

The banner text, “Welcome to the dawn of open-source networking.” Does this mean Vyatta is the dawn of open-source networking? Does every visitors expect to visit “the dawn of open-source of networking”? Does Vyatta think that it is an early time of open-source networking industry? …. While, “Vyatta: Open-Source Networking” describes the company clearly by “who we are” and “What do we do”, so “Vyatta: Open-Source Networking” should be at the most important position of the home page.
There are two “1.2.3”s on the same page, and they both catch eyes. The one in the middle of the page explained “1.2.3” more clearly, so it should be saved. The big “1.2.3” should be changed to something else that Vyatta want to say when it welcomes its visitors. Now “Welcome to the dawn of open-source networking” is acceptable, but this sentence still needs to be improved. “Welcome to Vyatta. The light for open-source networking.” Vyatta is the first company who provides commercial open-source networking services as well as software and hardwire. Light would be better than dawn, because dawn is just the beginning of a day, while light is something illustrates the world and last.
On the left side of the home page. The buttons, “DOWNLOAD NOW” (this one is not necessary to save, because it is redundant with the navigator and the tail), “BUY NOW!”, “NEWSLETTER SUGNUP”, and “COMMUNITY MAIL LISTS” should exchange positions with “customs”, “partners” and “awards”. Although the marketing people would consider that their customs are the most important thing, but for the convenience of their future customs or just visitors marketing information is less important than those functional buttons.
“Download” was repeated three times, once in the navigator, and then “DOWNLOAD NOW” button, the last one is on the tail, “Free Download”. Although download is very important for both customs and the company, but on this page one is enough clear for visitors to notice, since there aren’t many things on this page.

Now, my version home page is like this:

San Jose State University

2007-05-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

This is the home page of San Jose State University Website:

I used some time trying to create a "My Version" home page for San Jose State University. When I was doing so, I felt it's easy saying hard to do. When I was creating "My version" I made some usability mistakes too. So usability test is definitely necessary for every page.

These are my opinions for San Jose State University Website's home page:

The whole page is not in the middle of the screen, but on the left, so do all the other pages.

They put its logo on the bottom, but not on the upper-left corner to accord the conventional rules. Actually, a good logo is good clickalbe alternate for the text "Home". So no need to save "SJSU Home" in the horizon navigator, but the logo should be on the right position.

As for the navigators, one is horizon and another is vertical, their fonts are too small. If I don't go through the details, it looks like the vertical navigator is the lower level of the horizon navigator's first item, but actually the two navigators are separated.

After fixing the logo and navigator's problems, the big banner is not necessary. The text at the bottom of the banner "SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY" should be followed by "powering silicon valley," but they separate the sentence into two parts with different colors, positions, fonts and background. This made them visually have less relationships.

The "focus on" should be similar to the "news" and "events," but not the "quick link," so it should be at the same column as the "news" and "events."

"Choosing San Jose State" section should only have "Apply Now" button, because "Final Exam Schedule" is not part of this part. If the button "Final Exam Schedule" is used very often then there should be another button also be used very often, "Class Schedule", and these two buttons should be under another section, such as "quick link."

Personal speaking, I don't think the three images, which are on the top of “Choosing San Jose State” are necessary.

City of Mountain View

2007-05-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

The Home Page of City of Mountain View:

a. On the upper-left corner there is a “Low Graphics” in navy blue. The color is similar with the background, which made it very hard to recognize, and if the font size is bigger it would be easier to notice.

b. The navigator in the sections’ order should be “About us, Department, City Council, Community Development, Public Safety, Services (instead of ‘Library, Arts, Parks, & Rec’), and Calendar”, because for visitors they concern more about the city than city council.

c. At the tail of home page, there is an exact same navigator as the main one. This is a redundant, not necessary to save.

d. The home page contents are redundant with each other, such as the “Online Resources…” is redundant with the navigator, especially the “Library Catalog”. If the Online Resources put out something that doesn’t appear on other spaces of the home page, it would be better, such as “Municipal Code” and “Report a Crime.”

e. The title of “City News and Events” is too big for the section that the news items have little space left. The image is well done, but the content is the main role of this section. Put more news here will be better. In this section there is another problem that all these items are not in the same section or level. The first three belong to the section “City News”, whose upper level is Home page, while the last item is under the section “Services”. It looks like “Announcement” is a section in the same level as “City News and Events”, because it occupies the same size space as “City News and Events” and is more effective. To clarify that “Announcement” is a section under “City News and Events” the section title of “City News and Events” should cross the space till “How may we help you.”

f. “Learn About Our City” seems the same as “About us”, change it to another name, such as “City Highlights” or something else would be better.

g. Only the section of “How may we help you” has its title without capitalize all the first letters of each word. To make the whole Home page uniformed, the title should be “How May We Help You”.

The low graphic version:

i. In this version the whole page is not in the middle of the screen but on the left side, which is different from the graphic version.

ii. This page does’t have title and logo.

iii. There is a flash section “Learn About Our City”, which is not low graphic. To keep the two home pages in the same style, the flash could be changed to a static JPG format background.

iv. Not like the graphic version there are no “Contact us”, “Site Map” and date on the page.

v. Starting from this version home page to section page should also in low graphic version, but on the contrary it goes to graphic version and like the home page, only after click on “Low Graphic” would it go to low graphic version section page.

Content Logic:

From “Site Map” showed some logic flaws, such as, “Community Services” is under “Department” section; there are two “Service” sections; it seems there is no difference between “Community Services” and “Services”; “History Center” is under “Library”, but gives only obituary information; there is more library information besides the “Library” subsection; there are seven sections in Site Map, but eight in the navigator; “About Us” section is gone and so on…

Blogger

2007-05-27T16:37:00.001-07:00

This is Blogger's home page:

It is very good, and I only found one thing that really made me think, the Create a Blog section.

I didn't use it wrong when I created my own blog, but actually I thought that the circles of 1.2. 3 were clickable. What if I started from the circle 1? It was sure that I won't go anywhere, because like the other two circles, it is not clickable.

This is my version for Blogger's home page:

I put only "now" in the orange arrow to make the few words, "Create your blog" more obvious.

Usability Principles

2007-05-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

From Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug I summarized some usability principles. Based on these I will do some practice of reviewing Website usability.

1. "Don't make me think" is the first law of usability.

Make everything self-evidence.

2. Users may have these questions:

Where am I?
Where should I begin?
Where did they put___?
What are the most important thing on this page?
Why did they call it that?

3. There are five important things you can do to make sure they see-and understand- as much of your site as possiple:

Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page.
Take advantage of comventions.
Break pages up into clearly defined areas.
Make it obvious what's clickable.
Minimize noise.

The more important something is, the more prominent it is. Things that are related logically are also related visually. Things are "nested" visually to show what's part of what.

4. It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is mindless, unambiguous choice.

5. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. Omit needless words.

Happy talk must die.
Instructions must die.

6. The trouble with pulldowns. Pulldowns save space, but they have problems:

You have to seek them out.

Hard to get the content, when scan the page.

They're hard to scan/control.

If the designers use the standard HTML pulldown menu, they have no control over the font, spacing, or formatting of the list to make them more readable, and there's no really good way to divide the list into groups.

They're twitchy. Somehow the fact that the list comes and goes quickly makes it harder to read.

Pulldowns are most effective for alphabetized lists of items with known names.