[Web4lib] What's wrong with this picture?

[Heather Ebey]

Stacy,
I think Jonathan Bloy's note about inviting students in to do a 
usability study is a splendid idea. If you don't already have Steve 
Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think," I highly recommend it. There is a 
chapter on how to do a usability study cheaply, yet gain significant 
insight in a very short period of time. I believe both Steve Krug 
<http://www.sensible.com/> and Jacob Nielsen <http://www.useit.com/>  
think you can find about 85% of the problems with only 5 people testing 
the Web site.

Also, to back up Jonathan's mention of the alt tag, that is something 
that everyone learns in any basic HTML class. When I took XHTML at SJSU 
SLIS, we lost points if we missed any alt tags.  To be sure I never 
missed one, I ran my homework through the W3C markup validation 
service: http://validator.w3.org/

--Heather (MLIS in progress--May 2006)
Heather Ebey, weblibrarian at sent.com
http://librarianway.com/

On Tuesday, September 20, 2005, at 07:29  AM, Jonathan Bloy wrote:

> I won't go into a rant about how much I dislike the splash pages, 
> except
> to ask is there any way you could do a usability study?  Invite some
> students in, give them a treat and have them use the library site to
> find specific things.  Having some data to back up your impression of
> the site (which I think is spot on) could help your argument a lot.
>
> Good luck!
>
> ---
> Jonathan Bloy
> Web Services Librarian
> Edgewood College
> Madison, Wisconsin
> http://library.edgewood.edu
>