Improve Website Usability with User Stories
I was listening to John Oxton speak on the Rissington podcast about his preferred method of usability testing for improving the design of his websites. He suggested using the User Story technique.
This involves thinking about scenarios of how people will use your website. For example, “David comes onto the site and wants to make contact with the company”. Then your challenge, as web designer, is to make this as easy as possible for the user. Probably by putting contact information or a link to your contact page somewhere prominent on your website and not hidden away.
Although this might sound obvious, I’m sure everyone can thing of a time when they’ve been left feeling frustrated by a website because they couldn’t easily find what they wanted. I have experienced this type of situation before when I wanted to phone a company to find out about postage before buying a product. I didn’t want to step through the entire ordering process and be surprised by the cost right at the end! I just wanted to call the company and have someone give me a straight answer on the price. So what did I need? The telephone number! Which was hidden deep in the ‘about us’ section. Perhaps this was an after thought, or maybe the telephone number just looked ugly and wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to include in the design! Whatever the reason, my frustration could have been avoided by the web designer considering a few User Stories.
They’re very simply to implement – a few logical thoughts before and during the design process on how you think people will want to use the site – and the benefit to the user and success of your site, priceless.
