Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
By applying Nielsen and Molich's usability heuristics in a customized fashion to
test Web portfolio usability, we enable a path to further research which can
focus on the specific information product structure we see in the Web portfolio.
Each of the heuristics listed earlier has a direct influence on the outcome of the
user. In Web portfolio design, it is important to employ a heuristic evaluation
as well. A good usage of the rules devised by Nielsen and Molich would be to
adapt them to evaluate the usability of the Web portfolio. Many of the rules
were addressed in the initial design of our Web portfolio. However we can learn
by application of this usability theory to our own human computer interaction
vehicle, the Web portfolio. Most people, after posting the Web portfolio, ask
their friends and colleagues to “check out the Web site”. That approach is great
when you know that the Web portfolio site going to be successful. We can't be
assured of that unless we ask some critical evaluation questions before
releasing the site to the mass public. We can use a sample set of users, maybe
friends, maybe colleagues, maybe strangers (most honest and valuable sub-
jects), to explore the site, to test its usability from the real world view of the
unassuming user.
With this in mind, I propose adaptation to the Nielsen and Molich work for the
purpose of establishing usability evaluation questions for the usability of the
Web portfolio. These questions can be administered to a group of subjects in
order to test usability. This process can be low tech, or as Nielson describes,
low fidelity paper prototype — a fancy term for a sketched paper prototype
(your completed story boards qualify). Another usability testing media that can
be used is a high fidelity paper prototype. These are screens that are printed out
and administered to users for evaluation of usability. You can print and use
screens designed in Fireworks or Photoshop for this type of usability test. If you
have extensive text, you can print out the actual Web portfolio pages from a
Web browser. Or simply pencil in text on pages that have only amounts of text.
You can also place the text in the page in the screen design in an image editing
application (Fireworks or Photoshop). Make the text portions separate slices
so that you can delete them and replace the holes with editable HTML text. By
using text in the image editing application, you are simply using the text for
position only. You should however use the HTML font that you plan to use
when and if you replace the text in Macromedia Dreamweaver later on. A quick
review on Web text fonts — as mentioned before, we should only use Times
or Times New Roman; or Helvetica or Arial for all HTML, Web based text. I
