usability and interfaces

[Karen G. Schneider]

For my Human Factors class, I am writing a paper on WWW-based interfaces
for community networks (including library-based community information
systems).  (This is a neat class, btw, that has been an overview of human
computer interaction with an emphasis on psychological factors.)  I've
noticed that community networks take many different approaches to interface
design, and I'm curious about usability issues.  I'd like to hear
PERSONALLY from folks who design and/or maintain the WWW pages for
community networks; my paper will incorporate comments (unless you tell me
not to, which is o.k. too) and will be *online* even before it is in paper
(it's easier to do the examples that way!).  Next semester, I plan to do a
more formal online survey (hey! are WWW forms cool or what?), but after
struggling with this for awhile I found I couldn't really shape the
questions properly without talking to folks first.  Hey, maybe this can be
an American Libraries column?

My email address is <kschneid at umich.edu>

Some of the questions I have are:

Who designs and maintains your WWW page?

What threshold user group have you targeted with your WWW design?  E.g.,
usable by children (what age?), by adults, by new Americans?  Usable with
character-based browsers (e.g., lynx), with graphical browsers, only with
Netscape?

What are some of the design principles you've incorporated, and what were
your rationales?  (Examples might include ensuring the page can be read by
users with limited vision, using simple vocabulary, icons that "look like"
what they do, minimizing scrolldown, standardizing presentation, gobacks,
ensuring each document has standard headers and footers)

What kind of usability testing do you do?  Do you have staff try out pages,
do you select public users, do you do surveys?  Anything else?

How else do you find out that your page has problem areas (and strengths)?
Do you have feedback buttons, notice users ask specific ranges of
questions, track usage, look where the hits are?  Anything else?

Any other issues I haven't addressed, or should think of including in the
formal survey?

The little technozealot now hailing from beautiful downtown Ann Arbor
(awesome public library!  The cookbooks and music CDs alone are to die
for!) --

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Karen G. Schneider * kschneid at umich.edu *http://www.sils.umich.edu/~kschneid
Cybrarian * PhD Student, UM SILS * Columnist, American Libraries
Forthcoming: The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman at icm.com)
Technozealot* Iconoclast * Problem Child * Aging Disgracefully