After thinking a lot about it, I though that it would be fair enough to do the first usability analysis on my own website. So let's get our hands on the job.
Let me explain how this is gonna work:
- I will choose just one aspect of any website to put under the lens of usability.
- I will put a screen shot of the page, with some indications (maybe I'll vandalize it a little with arrows, circle marks, and occasionally some mustache) about what's going on and why something on the website doesn't work according to the usability criteria.
- At the end I will put some comments about how the feature, script, layout, whatever it may be, can work better or be simplified.
The analysis is made according to a list of usability criteria that was compiled by the EAI group (Ergonomics Applied to Informatics) with whom I gladly worked a few years ago. In the future I'll translate the list and post in my blog. Nonetheless you can find more information about usability guidelines at www.usability.gov .
So, let's take the first thing I discovered in my website that I think might be slightly in disaccord with the usability criteria called "learnability": the colors of the categories.



In the indication, I realize that the colors I choose don't play along with the expected logic of "matching colors" as they should, cause the green color is the dominant color. If you click on any link from the "Recent Entries" (yellow), the web site will display the topic with a green marker, and normally you expect some yellow elements in the page, which doesn't happen. Yeah, green is my favor color.

Should I change this feature or not?
Well, as I am the owner and the designer of this website, and because I like colors, I say no. Now, if the website isn't simple, or have much more levels and have high information density, probably, this could turn into a problem. In fact, in the accessibility guide lines made by our friendly neighborhood W3C, says to not rely information only on colors. Nonetheless, in this particular case, solving the colors issue is not reeeeally a big problem like global warming or Godzilla.


Stick around!

When there are a lot of ideas in your head, and you are not happy to show how good these ideas are only to your friends or your mom (which I don't do), you create a website. If you want to be professional, you won`t make a good impression if you only have sketches and notes on papers. Being a designer and a "wanna be"programmer, and because I work with usability, I would like to show people how well you can do improving the internet surfing experience. Ah, and having some fun.

As my Master degree research goes on, I have realized, that before I start working for real for companies, in usability field, I`d better discover how to do that having fun. I'm not saying you have to throw paper clips in your coworkers in the office (I don`t do that either) or tell stupid jokes about bananas wearing pajamas in front of your boss (I never do that, I swear!). What I'm trying to say is to really start enjoying applying usability across the web. And the first natural questions that popped up in my mind was "How?".

That was one of the questions I asked myself when I was "diving" for the very first time in the field of ergonomics back in University. I mean, I had to find something fun out of all the scientific stuff we had to study (and I do find fun in scientific material), but it is slightly different. Of course, it's not like playing games with your children, or having a great karaoke party with friends. But for me it is essential that I must work on something that I like. And if I had the opportunity to chose what I wanted to do, I`d do it having fun.

And sense of humor will be crucial here. So crucial as pajamas for bananas. Don?t worry, I?ll get more serious. I swear.

Take any example of bad experience you had in the past. Something not too serious of course, something you laugh about today. That is it: the usability analysis I'll show, it will be more or less like this. People often have funny stories about how you trip over your own foot on a stair case in front of a lot of people, landing in a very contortionistic position, or how you made a terrible joke about blond women at the dinner table with someone's blond mother sitting next to you(which I never did, of course). Now, why don`t we not use bad examples and tell funny and constructive stories about them? Sure they must be constructive, I don't want only to pose myself as a web site's design jester, making less of them. I want to promote a good sense of what works and what doesn't work. Respect is an important thing for me, and you win the joke when you win the respect of the listeners. I should write this on my grave stone?


Stick around!