Welcome to June's edition of USEworthy. In this issue, we focus on the business case for usability. In the article "Why Usability Matters", we discuss the many business areas that can be improved by good usability practices or in fact weakened through neglect of usability issues. In addition, we demonstrate the commercial benefits of User Centered Design by presenting a case study outlining the work carried out by The Usability Company to refine the online offering of international bookmaker Victor Chandler.
 

We also present an article that analyses the most pertinent issues concerning Intranet usability. It is claimed that badly designed company Intranets are costing employers up to £1,000 a year per employee so this article, which appeared in HR Gateway April 24 2003, discusses the usability issues surrounding poorly performing Intranet sites and includes excerpts from an interview with Paul Blunden, CEO of The Usability Company.

The Usability Company is sponsoring the usability supplement in the June 19 issue of The New Media Age. The usability supplement will serve as a guide to usability issues. It will give a comprehensive introduction to usability and a good overview of usability issues.

The Office of the e-Envoy launches its "Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design" document in June. Catriona Campbell, founder of The Usability Company was one of the two usability specialists who assisted the Office of the e-Envoy to write the document. The Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design document seeks to provide Government web managers with specific guidance around usability issues relevant to public sector websites and, in particular, awareness of issues that need to be addressed under the relevant human centred design standards. Having high quality, accessible and easy to maintain public sector websites is vital if the government is to meet its dual objectives of having all services online and achieving high levels of use for key services. Online copies of this document will be made available at the Office of the e-Envoy website.

June promises to be a busy month for Catriona Campbell. She will be speaking at the CIPFA e-Government Forum on Making e-Services Accessible to People with Disabilities, July 3. Catriona will be discussing the accessibility issues affecting government websites in particular, with regards to legal requirements, and the Quality Framework for Government Websites document developed by the Office of e-Envoy that Catriona helped to write. Catriona will also summarise some of the findings from the testing and research that The Usability Company has conducted with and on users with disabilities. This seminar is highly topical, as public sector organisations are required by law to put all suitable services online by 2005.

For more information about the conference, please visit the CIPFA website.

We hope to see some of you at the New Media Age's Effectiveness Awards ceremony. This is of particular interest to The Usability Company as Catriona Campbell is a member of this year's judging panel. The 2003 awards marks the awards' seventh year, which makes the awards the new media industry's largest and longest-running awards event. This year saw a record 660 entries, which Catriona and the other members of the judging panel have diligently whittled down to a shortlist of under 70 contenders!

The case study below, outlining the work carried out by The Usability Company to refine the online offering of international bookmaker Victor Chandler, demonstrates the commercial benefits brought by User Centered Design or User Centred Design in putting the user experience at the heart of the design process from a project’s inception. 

Most, if not all, Internet users are familiar with the hallmarks of poor usability. How often have you invested time at a site only to be frustrated because you were unable to complete a purchase or registration process, or couldn’t find the information you sought? More importantly for commercial websites, how was your perception of the brand behind the website affected by your experience? 

Time and money is being wasted by employers as workers take longer to do tasks because of badly designed or ill thought out Intranets claimed a leading consultancy today.