Users - Capabilities of Human Beings
Some background information:
PowerPoint Slides
Perceived affordance
Some categories of users:
- Variability in User Performance When doing website tasks, the slowest 25% of users take 2.4 times as long as the fastest 25% of users. This difference is much higher than for other types of computer use; only programming shows a greater disparity.
- Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.
- Middle-Aged Users' Declining Web Performance Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year--mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.
- Usability for Senior Citizens The Internet enriches many seniors' lives, but most websites violate usability guidelines, making the sites difficult for seniors to use. Current websites are twice as hard to use for seniors than for non-seniors.
Lab activity
Return to the sites that you explored in Lab 2.
- Look at the home pages and identify examples of the use of
- Proximity
- Similarity
- Symmetry
- Continuity
- Closure
- Look for any possible discrepancies in actual and pereceived affordance.
- Examine how the site seems to follow (or not) the guidelines:
- rely on recognition instrad of recall
- help users chunk information
- require as little short-term memory as possible.
