Resources for Web Usability Testing

Scott Grissom
Grand Valley State University

Purpose

This site serves as a reference for Web Usability Testing / Evaluation.

The Top Meta Index Sites

• Jakob Nielsen's useit.com
• Keith Instone's UsableWeb.com
• John Rhodes' WebWord.com
• Web Techniques magazine
• Gary Perlman's HCI Bibliography Project
• Web Review magazine
• STC Usability SIG

Testing Tools

• Gary Perlman's Web-based Evaluation Questionnaires
• Xenu's Link Sleuth - a freeware application that tests for broken links

Looking for....

• a tool to check for broken links,
• a tool to generate a visual representation of a site hierarchy
• a tool to analyze web server logs
• remotely see the participant's screen
• checklists
• sample evaluation reports

Usability Checklists for Heuristic Evaluation

• Information & Design's Usability Toolkit (Australian company)
• All Things Web checklist
• W3C Checklist for Accessibility
• IBM Web Design Guidelines
• Ameritech Web Guidelines
• Web Review Checklist

Design Guidelines

• Yale Web Style Guide

Companies that perform testing

• Information & Design in Australia
• Usability First
• User Interface Engineering
• UI Wizards

Print Publications

• M Levi & F. Conrad. "A Heuristic Evaluation of a World Wide Web Prototype," Interactions July 1996, ACM: New York, pp50-61, 1996.
• B. Keevil. "Measuring the Usability Index of Your Web Site," Proceedings of Computer Documentation, ACM: New York, 99 271-277, 1998.
• J. M. Spool et. al. Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
• Dumas & Redish: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Ablex Publishing, 1993.
• J. Nielsen: Usability Engineering, Academic Press, 1993.
• J. Nielsen & Mack (eds): Usability Inspection Methods, Wiley, 1994.
• J. Rubin: Handbook of Usability Testing, Wiley, 1994.