[WEB4LIB] Re: Web Site usability guidelines

P. F. (Pat) Anderson pfa at umich.edu
Tue May 15 16:55:04 EDT 2001


At 1:41 PM -0700 5/15/01, Thomas Dowling wrote:
>  > The U.S. National Cancer Institute did a major re-design of their web
>site,
>>  concentrating on usability, and they produced some guidelines that other
>>  web developers may find useful.
>>
>>  http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/
>
>Good thing they're developing their own guidelines, as none of their pages
>will get past Bobby.
>
>There's some good stuff in there, but if you're going to reinvent the
>wheel, it should at least come out round in the end.
>
>
>Thomas Dowling
>OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
>tdowling at ohiolink.edu

Their main page doesn't flunk Bobby:
      http://www.usability.gov/

What I like about their guidelines is that it applies a review of the 
evidence along with a quality of evidence statement. Not perfect, but 
I think this is a very valuable approach for someone to have taken. I 
do wish they'd cut down on the images, though. Usability-wise, it is 
hard to justify using images to communicate textual content unless it 
is part of a larger non-text graphic.

Pat Anderson
-- 
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