Web Site Usability Testing

When it comes to building a successful web site, usability is essential. To Northwoods, web site usability means designing web sites that "don't make you think" (to steal shamelessly from one of our mentors, Steve Krug).

At Northwoods, we specialize in doing just that. We create web sites and applications that focus on an intuitive and positive user experience.

Part of our approach is to be really smart in our designs.  But even smart designs make dumb mistakes, so we make sure we test our designs in the real world, with real users.

Usability Testing Methods

Key Task testing involves asking the user to do something very specific, like finding a specific PDF file in your site, then watching how well they do.

Get-it testing shows users the site to see if they can understand:

• What is this site and what is its purpose?
• What is this page and what is its purpose?
• What are the major sections of this site?
• Where am I, and what are my options?
• How do I search?

Paper Prototyping is a test of different designs and their effectiveness in communicating the brand, company objectives, professionalism, and the navigation scheme. Users are presented paper printouts or online "comps" of the designs and asked a series of questions to determine which site design is the most appropriate to suit the client's objectives.

Card Sorting is a testing of the site's navigation and information architecture. All of the major content sections of the site are written on note cards, and test subjects are asked to put them into logical categories and name those categories, explaining their rationale along the way. This is handy for getting an outside perspective and finding commonalities between various users.

Improving your web site

We can help by:

• tweaking your existing site
• conducting usability and user tests for your site
• consulting on your next design
• creating a full web re-design

If you want more information, contact us or call Rick Fessenbecker at 414-434-8202.