USEworthy June 2002
The monthly Newsletter from The Usability Company

Welcome to June's edition of Useworthy. As the country is gripped with World Cup fever, we check out how easy it is to get the scores on the net. Also Catriona Campbell our CEO is voted one of the 50 most influential people in the Internet Industry and we address the use of Online Usability Tools.

Catriona is named as one of the most influential people in the UK Internet

Catriona Campbell our figurehead and Usability Evangelist, has deservedly been voted one of the most influential people in the UK Internet Industry, having devoted herself to the world of usability.

She is a founding member of the Usability Professionals Association, one of the representative professionals for the field of usability on the E-Envoy's Government Framework Committee and is setting down guidelines for government sites; she also advises on International Standards Committees in the field of Human Centred Design.

Catriona was delighted by the recognition that she received. The feature will be published in the June issue of Internet Magazine.

paybox Case Study

In order to deliver against paybox business requirements, The Usability Company developed a unique testing methodology that incorporated website, mobile phone and Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) files within the scope.

paybox is the first proven international mobile phone payment system and 50% owned by Deutsche Bank. paybox operates like a debit card and enables secure payment online, in high street shops, restaurants and to send money to friends using a mobile phone.

paybox was launched in the UK in September 2001 with the same website template in Germany, Austria, Spain and Sweden. As the UK market can differ in taste to Europe paybox decided to research further the website preferences specific to the UK. The concept of sending money and paying with a mobile phone is very new, so it was important that the website explained paybox clearly and the benefits of using the service.

paybox decided to test the usability of the functionality and of the overall website. They selected The Usability Company (TUC) due to our "methodical and innovative ideas of how to test payboxs' product, especially in regards to testing the IVR files." TUC suggested testing the online sign up, online and offline send money function and the offline request money function. The offline functions required testing of IVR files for which The Usability Company set up a special 'Laboratory Speaker System' to amplify the voice files the users experienced.

Ultimately the content on several pages was adapted to include a more comprehensive explanation of paybox and changes were made to the sign up, send money function and voice files that would make paybox more appealing to a wide range of users.

World Cup Article

Every four years Britain is gripped by an incredibly infectious fever… Football fever. This summer, with England and the republic of Ireland taking part in the festival of football in Korea and Japan, the beautiful game will once again be the talking point in offices up and down the country. For the first time, the world cup is taking place in a time zone east of Europe and as a result most of the games will be taking place at either 7am British time or at mid-day. So how are workers going to follow the games? Our guess is through the Internet.
How did the various football information portals shape up against each other in the lead up to The World Cup?
Obviously the BBC and certain radio stations will be streaming games live, but what about fans that can't sit glued to every match? How will they follow their team's fortunes?

The Usability Company, specialists in the user experience, undertook research in April to gain an understanding of some of the issues an avid fan might encounter when trying to get information about groups, fixture timings and profiles of the teams in the lead up to the world cup.
A usability specialist acting as a typical user was able to suggest areas of the sites that will cause users problems.

As in the world cup, we started out with preliminary rounds. Sites such as www.fifa.com and www.guardianunlimited.co.uk still had to progress past the likes of captain England's own site and the infamous Kok Wee site. www.davidbeckham.co.uk features a very amusing face bending game, which lets users play about with Becks' head, but there is absolutely nothing about the world cup, so Captain David goes out early. Kok Wee www.kokwee.net/manutd.html a Korean footie fan joins him in the proverbial early bath. The only reason for his site's infamy is the terrible mess he's made of it.

So to the quarterfinals: the BBC takes on Sky Sports in the battle of the TV giants. On the day of testing, the Sky Sports site is still too preoccupied with the premiership and breezes past the upcoming competition, so the BBC sweeps through to the next phase.

Next up is The Telegraph against the Scottish representatives. Tenants lager have launched a site called www.notattheworldcup.com and while their site offers a nice selection of flags to download from England's group, the site in it's own words "will be up and running before David Beckham." As it turned out, the site was launched at about the time Beckham was bouncing around on his trampoline. The Telegraph on the other hand has the edge and in the end there's no real contest as the Scots crash out and get home before their postcards… again.

Fifa takes to the stage and dances samba rings around Planet Football and then The Guardian gets a by to the next round when on the day of testing the ITV website is down (injuries yet again).

So now the real contest begins. Here's a summary of the star players, the nearly men and the sites who went home early...

The Telegraph site offered disappointing coverage, especially considering its' good reputation for sport. The information available is protected by a login and registration procedure. It is likely that this will put off or prevent large number of users accessing the information that is present. The user is also forced to drill through several layers of navigation to find any mention of the World Cup. Once the user has found a link to the information (it is below the fold line), there is surprisingly little content. The information offered is the teams listed by group and the dates, location and times (in the UK) of the matches in each one.

Up against the BBC, it doesn't stand a chance. The BBC World Cup website news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football is easy to find and it will no doubt prove popular with large numbers driven there by TV and radio coverage. Overall the site got the thumbs up as it was packed with features and up to the minute information that will interest readers. Within the team sections the initial games are listed with the opponents, the date and the UK time the match is being played. The location of the match is not listed but users can click through to see more information. The games are listed by group and not by date so it is difficult to tell which matches are happening on a given date without looking through the detail of the whole page.

The other newspaper site 'Guardian Unlimited' proved frustrating. The World Cup section was shown below the top menu and the headers take up approximately 80%, of the screen at 800x600 resolution. This makes finding content difficult for users and does not help to engage users. The teams in each group are not listed so it is difficult for users to know which group to pick in order to find out about the teams they are interested in. Once they have chosen, in knowledge or in hope, they are faced with a huge page of text. This page initially tells the user which teams are in that group, but then goes on to give a general synopsis of the team and their history, rather than up to the minute information about their chances and the players involved. It is not possible to get the fixtures list for each of the teams or the group from this page or go back to choose another group without pressing the 'Back' button.

The official World Cup site FIFA.com scored top points and was claimed to be a very usable site. It offers 7 languages maximising the number of fans able to use the site and includes the languages of the host countries. The individual team sections provide news, background info and profiles on star players in an obvious and intuitive manner. It is also possible to see when each team plays their matches but not which group they are in. There are also links to the full fixture list.

So to the final, BBC vs. FIFA... The Official FIFA World Cup site and the BBCi site have lots of information about all aspects of the World cup and will be popular destinations.
But we have to have a British winner so... some people are online! They think it's all over; it is now... The BBC is awarded the Usability Cup.

Usability: An Introduction
Part V - Online Usability Tools

In this months' introduction to usability we consider the role of online usability tools as part of the usability practitioners' tool kit.

Traditional laboratory based usability testing (Usability Evaluation) Is still by far the most detailed and comprehensive method of identifying usability issues with websites. However the data captured in the lab can be supplemented and in some cases replaced with the use of online usability tools.

Online usability tools are designed to capture date from two sets of visitors: Real world users, and recruited participants. We will look at each.

Real world users visit the site and are asked to participate in the research. They have to 'opt in' in order to be included and having done so are presented with some questions. The best tools do not bombard the visitor with a mile long list of questions but are targeted at the key issues. For example, 4 questions may be presented that capture the demographic information, purpose/objective for visit, referral source and value placed on the online brand. On leaving they will be asked four more questions confirming whether they achieved their objective, if not why not, and a measure of how their online experience has impacted their perception of brand value. This type of online usability tool is ideal for identifying areas where lab based usability testing needs to be targeted.

Recruited participants, from a pool recruited either specifically for the usability research or on a retained basis are asked to complete tasks. A window appears on the page providing them with instruction but not interfering with their interaction with the website. On completing the task, or failing to do so, the participant is required to describe their experience and what they found difficult or unintuitive about the site.

Whilst this second type of online tool does not provide the level of granularity that lab based usability testing does, it has a number of advantages. For example one of the main barriers to carrying out large-scale usability projects with high numbers of participants has been the high associated cost. The costs come from recruitment, extended lab time and on occasions from travel if the participants need to be recruited from different geographic groups or regions. Online usability tools of the task type provide a cost effective method of capturing data from large group of participants.

The Usability Company has a number of online usability tools but our advice is that they form part of the overall solution and at present, cannot be considered the solution in themselves.

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