Steps of a redesign

Overview
Goals
Time estimate and team
Content review
Site structure and navigation
Finalize timeline and content
Visual design development
Production and proofing
Launch and maintenance

User testing

You've figured out what goes where and how you'll label those areas. It makes sense to you, but will it be as clear to your audience? You can save yourself a lot of reworking later by testing a paper or HTML prototype now. According to web usability guru Jakob Nielsen, with only five people you can identify eighty percent of site-level usability problems through user testing.

Test your navigation

It is critical that your navigation is clear to the audience. Luckily, finding out if you've met that goal is easy. Give your sample users a list of your navigation choices and ask them what they expect to find if they click on each choice. If they answer "I don't know," or indicate a different type of subject matter than you're planning to include under that link, you'll want to try again. You can also ask them "what would you click on if you were looking for x?" If there's a navigation choice they never select, ask them why and change it accordingly. Remember, good navigation is user-driven.

Example: for the campus site, potential users were given only the names of the navigation links on a piece of paper and asked to write in what they thought they'd find when they clicked on each link. If their answers matched up with the actual content, we were on the right track--if not, we obviously weren't. And when we found a problem area, we fixed it. "Campus Overview" was originally called "About Illinois," until the audience indicated that they expected this section would provide information about the state, not the Urbana campus.

Test your site structure

Testing for this should be task-based: give your users a task to perform such as "find information about program x." Ahead of time, you can have each screen drawn with paper and pencil -- showing navigation links and any other interface elements--and ask the user to point to the links they'd select, making sure the path to the information is quick and easy for your users. See an example of a paper prototype from Nielsen's video.

If you have a little more time, you can create a click-through prototype which is a text-only version of the interface with working links. (DynamicDiagram's site shows a great before-and-after example of both the click-through test and the final design.)

Time the test-users and note how many wrong turns they take before they accomplish the task. Reorganize your structure when you find users are getting lost.

University rules about testing

You may have heard that the campus must follow federal regulations regarding "research with human subjects."

The University of Illinois is an institution that conducts a great deal of research. Therefore when we mention testing and surveys, the review board wants to make sure we know what the university rules for user testing are and that we're adhering to them. In general, as long as you're testing your site and not the people, you're exempt from filling out the necessary forms, but you should read these university rules and make sure you're in compliance.

 

Resources

Usability reports (pdf) from User Interface Engineering (university log-in required)

• Designing for the scent of information
• Getting them to what they want
• Recruiting without fear
• Making the best with Flash

 

 

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Have questions or materials you'd like to share? E-mail Michele Plante.