Discuss the content of the site you are redesigning and how you think it might change as a result of Nielsen's discussion of content in relation to usability in chapter 3.
ARTEMIS - please discuss the current site.
Oak Creek - please discuss one of the similar sites, such as http://www.lihi.org, since we don't have a current site yet.
I think the site is simple and clear now, but things could definitely be categorized differently. For instance, I think home, donate and sitemap could definitely be put in a utility bar at the top - and maybe the footer at the bottom as well. Jobs could also be put under About. I think maybe the pre-application form could be a constant in the side right column.
The site has an effective design in terms of clarity. The site is not overly complicated by graphics and sections of text are very short and to the point. Also because this is a technical site, it's good that there are diagrams explaining what the text means. However, there are times where the page is just the image alone. For example in Inspector Satellite Imaging System, it'd be nice if there was a section of text there maybe explaining further.
Neilsen mentioned the importance of links that actually told the user what they were clicking. I think some of the links could be more helpful. Looking at the Satellite page it'd be better if the links explained what the content of the pdf forms were. Subystems 1 and 2 to me are a bit vague. What's the difference between the two?
There are several components of the ARTEMIS website which enhance usability, and also some that do not. For example, the navigation toolbar at the top of the page is effective because it allows users to quickly discern what content is available on the site, and go to it easily. Overall, the written content on the site is not very verbose, which makes it easier to scan and pick out the important information.
The main page could be improved, however. The paragraphs there are awkwardly worded, and must be carefully read to understand the goal of the project. By using less technical language, the main page could more quickly convey exactly what the project is about.
The satellite section currently has the most content, but it it could be more usable. There is actually not enough written material on these pages. Each could have a short blurb at the top, which the user could quickly scan to determine exactly what he is looking at. This would likely keep the user more interested, so he would spend more time reading the actual content.
One last thing I think needs to change is that there should be more project news. This sort of dynamic content would keep users returning to the site to see if there had been an update.
When arriving at the lihi site, the homepage is both above and below the fold which is an inefficient use of space. The information below the fold could easily be placed somewhere above without crowding the rest of the design.
The navigation creates confusion when trying to keep track of where the user clicks. After clicking on "Need Housing?" the user is taken to a page that does not pay any attention to including the other links that are within the drop-down menu. This is a lack in consistency that does not allow the user to understand why the site distinguishes the clickable tab in the menu from the links in the drop-down.
When reading Nielsen, the toolbar stands out as netural and visually appealing piece of the site, but the organization of content is lacking. For example, there needs to be obvious distinctions between the Need Housing and About LIHI tab. In addition, some of the links in the drop down could be consolidated . With so many choices that are not fully necessary, the content makes the navigation harder for the user.
The organization of content could also you more lists and bulleted information because as we know online users tend to scan the page and quickly look for the most important information. Without bulleted or organized lists, the search and scan for the user can become a much more daunting task.
I think it would be a good idea to put (.pdf) beside the Application Form link as well as a link to downloading the adobe acrobat reader program, because not all users will have this and the form would be no good to them. It should probably also be made available in (.doc) or (.rtf) as well. The navigation appears clean, but in reality, it is more cluttered and less descriptive than it should be. The usage of more than one link in the navigation to get to the same page within the site is unnecessary. Using some type of bullet points or separation between the text describing the various areas where volunteers are needed on the Volunteer Opportunities page would be a good way to help organize and bring clarity to the textual content on this page. I feel as though there should be more images through out the site in general. They have good quality images in the few places that images exist, but having more on pages where there is lots of text would enrich the experience and would help break up the text, making it easier on the site viewer.
The homepage of the ARTEMIS website appears to have effective usability. It makes good use of bullets to display valid information, and there is nothing below the fold line when the page is maximized. I don't like the color of the letters down the right side of the page that spell out Automated Rendevous...becaue I think they could easily be confused for links due to the font color. A lot of the links on the site need improvement especially with titling. We need to make sure that people understand what they are clicking on so that can navigate with ease. Some of the .pdf files that are included as links are very lengthy difficult to understand. This is all very difficult for users, because not everybody is a rocket scientist with knowledge about aeropspace engineering.
One other problem that I took note of that has absolutely nothing to do with usability is the page layout. The deisgn of it looks horrible. What we need are some outer-space pictures that are displaying skies of blue. Not to mention adding a touch of burnt orange just so that we make sure the users haven't forgotten that they are still in Longhorn country as long as they are on the ARTEMIS website.
The content of the Low Income Housing Institute Website is fairly well designed, but it does have its readability flaws. The content offered on the site, most of it under the "About LIHI" navigational tab, is fairly concise and not extremely lengthy for the most part, but some areas still could be shortened. According to Nielsen, some of the content does need to be broken up and spaced out more in order to be easily scannable by the viewer. Perhaps certain words should be bolded for emphasis in the "Advocacy" and "Resident Services" sections in order to not break up the content (if the client so chooses to keep all the information), but still increase the scannability and readability of the content.
In other areas of the LIHI website, the web designers and content writers did make use of spreading the content out and using lists which made it easier to udnerstand some of the key important parts of each page such as on the "Urban Reststop" page.
The headings theselves of each topic was straightforward without any "cutesy' kind of fluff, but in considering a redesign, at the top of each page it might be a good idea to have a quick one or two sentence summary encapsulating the main gist of what information is offered on the page.
Well in the Low Income Housing Institute's website, it was nicely designed with a nice screen size and great neutral colors, which are a few key aspects on which Nielsen would have approved. However, if we were to be redesigning LIHI instead of Oak Creek, then there are a few changes that should be made in order to satisfy the full critique of Nielsen. First and most obvious is the navigation bar. It is nicely designed, however, it is very poorly organized. We witnessed multiple links to the same pages, poor descriptions to other pages, and even wrongly used drop down link choices. Now the drop down link choices were a great design and would have worked really well if this paticular site would have needed it, but this site didn't have enough links within to fill it up. As for the content, the web page is mediocre. There is nothing that stands out on this page, and the content is just put out there in long paragraphs and as Nielsen stated in chapter 3, the viewers read computer screens at a slower rate then regular paper, and if you put long paragraphs of information in a web page, the viewer would easily get tired of reading what you have to say. Another problem with long lumps of information is that viewer hate to have to scroll up or down. So one of the key redesigning issues I would handle on this website is that I would organize the information in a better context to keep the viewer informed without the agonizing stress of having to read long paragraphs from a computer screen.
The ARTEMIS site was designed with conciseness and minimization of space in mind, but this comes at a price. The main site does a good job summarizing the purpose of the project - in fact, it almost makes the "mission" tab seem irrelevant. However, users expecting to find out about the latest news and events on the main page will be sorely disappointed. Not only are they found on separate tabs, but the location of these tabs with respect to the others (on the right) is rather counter-intuitive.
Currently, most of the content is focused in the "satellite" section. The main "satellite page" doesn't explain much - the user gets a low-quality breakdown of the satellite, with little correlation between the labels on the diagram and the "satellite" subsection pages. As for the subsection pages themselves, the information isn't presented in a consistent manner. The simple laundry list of specs is also of little use for anyone but aerospace engineers. Finally, the site does provide two PDF's on the subsystems, but offer no info on what to expect, or the difference between them.
There's also no info about the team members themselves, but that was already addressed in the client interview so hopefully that will change.
I agree with Nielson when he says that sites should be scannable and easily read in a few seconds. I think this could be obtained easier if there were more lists or bolded items of short paragraphs. That way the important concepts could stick out to the reader more quickly. Captions to the images, or short descriptions of the diagram could help as well.
I feel like a video diagram could also be helpful on the Artemis site. A piece or two of multimedia would surely enhance viewers reactions to what the group is building and what the project is about.
I do, however, agree that the site navigation (with the links at the top) allows users to scan quickly. I think a method that would appease Nielson's suggestion to keep users coming back for more would be to include some type of collaborative community forum like a blog or a wiki about the project so that site viewers will continue to come back to check what's new.
By keeping the text above fold, the project site arrords some good usability, according to Nielsen, as the users don't want to scroll down to read extra text of find extra content.
The site, though a placeholder, does have (in Nielsen's view) too much text. A short paragraph structure or a structure of text relying on well chosen bulleted links or simple lines of text would afford visitors a more usable site. The bullet text at the bottom is helpful, but the preceding paragraph structure is a bit heavy (though without being minamalist).
The content is usable, too, in the site navagation. With no need to scroll or hunt, the navagation toolbar in combination with the header (whole style sheet) is clear and concise with easy to follow links and
One problem in regards to usability on the site is the title tags. The alt tags are well done on the pictures and bottom links, but there are no seperate, non-flash title tags for the main navigation at the top of the page. This might cause usability issues with text to voice readers or those HTML readers wich might lack flash or have flash disabled as something like a work computer.
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The reverse side also has a reverse side
The site is very concise. However, it's still not concise enough. Nielsen mentions that readers online are often too lazy to read through paragraphs. It might be a better idea to shorten it to bullets so it'll be easier to scan for the readers. The website mainly use signature pictures, but I feel as a community website, it might be a good idea to insert more community-oriented photos. Like the chapter says, a good photo may convey things words cannot. Another aspect is that the site does not utilize any type of media, which may be sticking to its theme of simplicity. However, something more enhancing like video clips of local community projects and events may make the site more exciting. Last, but not least, the theme color is not aesthetically pleasing. When we viewed the website in class, the theme appeared to be chocolate brown and minty green. However, upon viewing the site on other computers, it's a faded green and burnt orange? UT pride aside, it is not a very good color mixture.
According to Nielsen, easy usability of a website is dependent on providing quality content. Quality content consist of providing fast answers and being useful to the user. LIHI accomplishes this by informing users of their services in a clear and concise manner. A user can easily find what they are looking for by rolling the cursor over the different toolbar options and choosing appropriately from the drop down options. One or two clicks usually finds the content one is looking for.
Also, Nielsen says to keep text short due to the fact that users do not like reading a lot from the computer screen and do not like to scroll down to read additional text. LIHI does a relatively good job of this. Some of the pages do have large blocks of text that force the user to scroll to see the additional text, but the users does not have to scroll for very long. This could be improved by editing the paragraphs and making them fit into the screen.
In addition, the site should try to enhance scannability. For example, using bullets or multiple headings are suggested to achieve this effect. LIHI does not do this well. They could benefit from using headings, bullets, and shorter paragraphs to enhance the sites scannability and allow users to find information much quicker.
Neilsen's theory on Usability is very clear. He tries to convey one message loud and clear, and that is to keep the user's attention on a particular website and for that user to keep coming back to it over and over again.
The language should be simple and sweet, and easy to understand by everyone who reads it. It should also be interesting at the same time, or the visitors will click away from the page right away. The LIHI website's homepage does a very good job of following these guidelines. The text is one short paragraph and it is to the point.
As I read through Neilsen's material, he mentions the use of Headers on pages and Page titles, and how important they are to the page. LIHI only has one titles for the browser, and even though it is short and useful, it does not tell you what the page is trying to convey to the visitor. I would rather see the broswer title change to "Contact Information" when I click on the contact tab, instead of it still reading "LIHI-Low Income Housing Institute".
The third thing Nielsen mentions is the use of multimedia on the Internet in recent years, and how people are sometimes overdoing it as well. The LIHI website has no flash intros or any sort of video, and it would not hurt if they had a couple of videos, but I feel that their use of photographs is well done and it most likely conveys their message of providing low income housing. On 56k dial up speeds, it does take a few extra seconds, but compared to other graphic intensive sites, this site loads pretty fast on a slow connection. Also, it would not hurt to have low quality audio, something soothing to have in the background, as the site is for struggling families and more than likely, they are very stressed out as they go through the site.
Maanit Shah
Computer Science
According to Nielsen a Website is supposed to keep it's language short and to the point. Text that is too long, or too detailed me distract the reader and cause them to lose interest. I believe the LIHI website does a good job at being straightforward with it's information. Although it's history section is a little bit lengthy, it is broken up using hypertext links, which is what Nielsen suggests to do.
Nielsen also takes time to stress the importance of page title's. Page title's are possibly the most important thing to attract a reader's attention. If the title isn't short, to the point, and doesn't describe the page, the user will just skip over it. LIHI does a good job at keeping it's titles to three words or less. All of them are to the point and they give you a good idea of what content will be on the page.
Another important aspect of a website is it's use of multimedia. Nielsen states that animation, video, and sound are very popular sources of multimedia. While LIHI is lacking in the use of any of those sources, they make good use of pictures on their website. Each section has about one picture that helps to convey the meaning of the section that the text is trying to get across.
Yet, it would be nice if there were a video or animation to help give the website a little more diversity.
The Artemis website doesn't really have enough content. It does use large images in many places to explain technical things (an example is that the image of thrust vectors is easier to comprehend than a technical explanation), but this shortens the amount of content even further. While the lack of content allows for a good homepage length with minimal scrolling, as Nielson suggests, it is still a lack of content. And as Nielson clearly states, "Content is number one". The one redeeming feature is that due to the lack of content, the actual paragraphs are short enough to read fully and not scan, a good step towards usability.
The homepage, while good in reference to length, is only good in this respect because it is primarily a welcome message (which Nielson warns that users will skip.) It does, at least, have the all important navigation bar at the top and prominent. Another good feature are the blue headers. They are short and provide a good idea of the paragraph content, and the color makes the page easy to scan.
After reading Nielson's views on content, I think the Artemis website would be better with more content, but it should definitely keep the blue headers. It needs a homepage that doesn't begin with Welcome, which is a warning signal to users, but in general it is fairly user friendly.
19 September 2006 - 9:11pm
ARTEMIS Website - http://artemis.ae.utexas.edu/index.php
"Welcome" as stated in Neilsen, takes away from the opening page. As an engineering project site it has a purpose and it should be expected that engineers or other visitors to the site have the intent to search this website for a reason. A "Welcome" portion can be edited into an overall description and intent of the website for new and existing students or engineers with its own section by the senior project manager laying out the fine points of the project.
ARTEMIS is an awesome name just like FASTRAC the previous satellite project. The logo with its abbreviation I believe would be more useful at the top instead of the right hand side. I’m an aerospace engineering student and I know what the project stands for but a first time user might not have a clue and would have to scan the page.
Abbreviations should be written completely. What’s the meaning of UT? As a student at this school the name is obvious. This is a misleading abbreviation because it can stand for the University of Tennessee. The intro should give credit to UT @ Austin. It’s letting the reader search the content to find out at the bottom that it is actually based at the University of Texas.
A gray background takes the life away from this project. Its a satellite, YES, where does it go, SPACE, its vital to put life into this object because a satellite is complicated piece of equipment that is not dull and useless, it has an overall purpose a mission.
The website is straight to the point but needs more emphasis in structure and content. The components in the Satellite Section are vital to the user to understand its functions. I cannot read the actual components in the image. SolidWorks a 3-D CAD modeling program was used to create those pieces. A video of the assembly of the satellite can also be created in SolidWorks to describe the set-up. A search bar would also be useful because in the finished product will have an abundant amount of information.
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