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Usability: Whose Problem is it Anyway?

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Trocadero's CC Club was host to a discussion about usability in the current new media landscape last Monday. Usability: whose problem is it anyway? attracted a set of lively industry practitioners seeking enlightenment on their path to creating usable and accessible websites. Cynthia O'Murchu reports.

Usability and Accessibility: What's the difference anyway?

Making a hard and fast distinction between accessibility and usability is not particularly helpful, argued Stefan Haselwimmer of Usability Exchange, an organisation that provides usability and accessibility testing. Accessibility is usability, Stefan declared, and urged the audience to test with both disabled and non-disabled users.

Martin Bazley, director of ICT4Learning.com nuanced this thought, suggesting that accessibility could be seen as a subset of usability.

Former civil servant turned developer Matthew Somerville argued out that sometimes sites are accessible but not usable. His organisation MySociety produces popular civic websites such as Neighbourhoodfixit and TheyWorkForYou. The latter, Matthew suggested, is a usable version of the official Parliament website, in that it makes access to information about MPs and other representatives easily accessible by entering the user's post code.

Stefan further pointed out that a lot of progress has been made in the area of accessibility since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995. Much of the real progress is due to companies embracing the concept of accessibility rather than being pressurised by government regulations, Stefan argued. He expects the same to be true in the case of usability.

Love thy audience

The panel agreed that involving the audience and requesting feedback is crucial. Accessibility and usability are not just about technical requirements, Martin Bazley, whose company works frequently with schools and museums, found. Though some sites may indeed be technically usable, they may not be intellectually usable, because they're not engaging or about a topic that is not relevant to the target audience. He cited the example of an obscure museum website, too specialised to appeal to a wider audience, and hence not usable.

He challenged participants to think about the following questions: Who is the site for? Where are they using it? What are they using it for? And most importantly - why are they going to use it? Ultimately, Martin thought, sites needs to coincide with the users' own agendas.

Given the user-focused nature of Web 2.0, creating a product or a site now means updating it after launch in response to user feedback, Stefan Haselwimmer offered, citing Googlemail and Yahoo as examples. "Do user questionnaires and get feedback" and "Empower the audience" were two of Stefan's mottos for the evening.

The Power of Timing

So when is a good time to start usability testing? Leisa Reichelt, User Experience Consultant with Flow Interactive found that one of the main obstacles to achieving usable websites is that agencies and clients tend to come to usability testing late in the process. Executives, marketing and brand managers and others in charge of devising the proposition and content strategy of a website are just as much responsible for usability as others involved in the production process, she argued. Start thinking about usability at the beginning of a project, and even test concepts and ideas before they reach the production stage, Leisa advised.

Keeping up with technology - what about a redesign?

The panel agreed that redesigning a site to make it accessible and usable does not have to be hard and expensive anymore. A lot of off-the shelf software exists on the market to make it easier to add functionality requested by users. Getting the user experience right is more important than focusing on the technology, the panel found.
In response to an audience member's worry about the lack of budgets to keep up with the technological advances, Leisa Reichelt countered that it wasn't primarily about the technology, but about making the site appropriate and relevant from the user's perspective. "Often the fancy stuff is not needed", she explained.

Furthermore, simply trying to put a usable interface on an unusable backend is not advisable, Leisa warned in response to an audience question. Martin Bazley saw this type of situation as an opportunity to educate the client about the need for usability testing in another phase. Stefan Haselwimmer also underlined that user testing is getting more and more affordable, so the benefit will outweigh the cost.

"Accessibility means making reasonable changes," he reminded the audience. "It comes down a pragmatic approach." He suggested that companies should not rush into a redesign, but stressed the need to get full feedback from the users, in order to evaluate just what kind of changes should be made. Martin Bazley agreed, saying that in the life cycle of websites the decision to redesign often gains momentum, so that small points are often forgotten.

Location, location - and context

The conversation about when and where to test yielded some enlightening facts.
The panel discussed how tests can be conducted anywhere from a fully-equipped lab, to more low-key solutions. Martin Bazley pointed out the importance of making a test realistic. Testing a website for pupils in a classroom is quite different from having teachers view the site in a museum. "Use it in the arena in which it was designed to use," is Martin's advice.

Panel host and new media consultant Kathryn Corrick recalled consulting on a site targeted at young women. During her research, she spoke to mothers who sat at the computer with their babies in their arms, reducing their ability to click and type - a realisation that strongly informed the way she thought of the site - and hence its execution.

Flash and usability

One audience member wondered whether flash was even appropriate in a site targeted at adults.

While the panel agreed that often flash is used for 'flash's sake', they also pointed out that it is all about context. Using flash on a banking site may for example not be appropriate, while using an immersive experience on an entertainment site may be fully on target. As always, creators would need to understand the reason users may have for visiting a site before determining whether an immersive experience using flash is appropriate or not. Stefan Haselwimmer added that having flash does not make a site non-accessible. In fact, dyslexic users, he suggested, may even find flash sites more accessible.

The role of accessibility standards

One delegate queried the role of accessibility standards.

Technical guidelines such as the W3C guidelines may not necessarily help you comply with disability legislation such as the DDA, said Stefan Haselwimmer, reiterating the importance of talking to users. Dyslexic users, Stefan said, are often forgotten, but they frequently flag up problems that affect the general users, such as issues with navigation and language. Guidelines can be helpful, agreed Matthew Somerville, but he warned that it's not as simple as just ticking boxes. Guidelines should not be treated as the bible.

Usability testers: look for commonalities or differences?

Audience member Graeme Newcomb from SureState, a web development company, asked the panel about cultural and age-related differences with regards to usability testing requirements. Who should test a site?

Martin Bazley admitted that there is often a real, predictable difference between old and young users or users from different cultural backgrounds. But he also pointed out that often the differences are also exaggerated.

Stefan Haselwimmer reiterated the need to be pragmatic in choosing a user segment. Since companies cannot have thousands of different testers, the choice of testers depends on both the target audiences and the motivation for user testing. But he did speak in favor of testing edge-cases. Testing with extremes, he suggested could have a lot of worth to general users.

Leisa Reichelt on the other hand argued that it is often more important to focus on the commonality among users rather than on their differences and not make assumptions about users. For example, if someone subscribes to Facebook or MySpace that does not necessarily mean that they are web evangelizers.

How to educate a client?

Project managers, designers and developers may find themselves faced with clients who don't yet understand the need for usability testing, proving it difficult to sell the concept to them. An audience member asked the panel to provide some tips to help educate the client.

Get the client to realize the problems themselves, advised Martin Bazley. He suggested conducting a virtual user test with the client, walking them through the site, and letting them find problem areas themselves. Leisa Reichelt agreed and added that testing does not necessarily have to be conducted in a lab, but should be woven in as much as possible into the process. Another method is to create personas of typical users and pinning down through role-play what they may or may not do on the site.

Kathryn Corrick pointed to an obvious, but crucial fact. "What's most important to bear in mind is that if a site isn't very usable then you are less likely to make money from it."

Parting thoughts…

To summarize some of the key thoughts of the panel:

• Accessibility is for everyone!
• Empower the user: talk to users and listen to their suggestions.
• Think about the target audience and the context of the site.
• Start thinking about usability and accessibility at the beginning of a project.
• Don't slavishly follow the rules and templates. Get users involved in the process.
• And last, but not least, in Leisa Reichelt's words: "Dispel the myth that people who do usability don't like design. It's about aiming for something that works really well and looks really elegant."