Neilson Reading 2

I think the LAITS site could work with the approach they are going for, but I think some changes need to be made. I think the navigation should definitely change. I think they need to consolidate their main sections, and add in anchor links, so you don’t have to read through the whole page to find one sub-section. Neilson talks about the HOME acronym, so I think I should address each of the letters and where the LAITS site stands with each one. H stands for High-quality content. I think the LAITS site does have high-quality content. I do think it could be organized a little better, and made easier to find through navigation and more organized formatting, like bullets, and better paraphrasing. The next letter is O. It stands for Often updated. This part is hard to rate, because there really is no current events section. As far as I know, the only page that would be updated would be the courses page. This is something I think the LAITS could use. I think it should have some sort of sign that lets users know the site is alive. I know that my favorite sites are updated consistently. You like to know that the information on the site is up to date and accurate. The next letter is M. It stands for minimize download time. This is one letter that the site strives in. However, I think there is such a thing as taking this acronym too far. I think that the fast load times are definitely good, but I would be willing to sacrifice a second or so to have some nicer, more relevant graphics. I think they should put some pictures that are easy to see, and easy to tell what they are referring to. The next letter is E, which stands for Ease of use. I believe the site can improve upon this, by implementing a search function, making heading larger, and consolidating main sections, but implementing anchored links. I have repeated some of the suggestions I have because I think they are big issues that would help the site on multiple levels.

Neilson’s analogy about the costumes and play completely made me aware to the fact that content is the most important part of the site regardless. Some of Neilson’s recommendations for content organization are to keep your texts short, always grammar check, use scannability, plain language, page chunking, etc. The LAITS site has many issues. One of the issues that is apparent at the very beginning that needs to be changed is the amount of links in the front page. What’s worse is that none of the links have any description to them. A user coming into the page has no idea what each picture link’s purpose is. Many of the inner links also suffer from poor page chunking. The inner links all start off with a description of the link they just clicked, instead of the import information being at the top. The scannability of the inner pages is also very sporadic. The sections of each inner page are nicely broken up and even have bullets, but the sections aren’t distinguished enough and much of the important information (contact info) can only be reached through scrolling. This problem needs to be addressed because Neilson states that many users do not read the parts that are needed to scroll. In terms of simplicity in chapter 9, the LAITS site may look simple at first, but once the user actually has to take the time to look at each little picture to see what they want, it begins to get a little confusing. The site basically needs a major overhaul.

In his book, The Practice of Simplicity, Jakob Nielsen provides many guidelines to help improve the usability of online web pages. These guidelines can also benefit the ITS page built for the U. of Texas Liberal Arts department (Cola). I am posting to discuss how Nielsen’s usability guidelines could be implemented to improve the COLA site.

Link Descriptions

Nielsen brings up that many users prefer short, accurate descriptions for the links and downloads that they are considering clicking. Basically, users want to know what they are getting before they open something (Nielsen gives a great example pertaining to video on p. 133). COLA should implement this concept & increase usability by including short descriptions of the functions and services that the graphics link users to. These graphics are not completely descriptive so short description would be helpful.

Page Chunking

How many liberal arts students actually come to the COLA site to a find lengthy description of the bulk purchasing program? Mr. Nielsen makes the statement that online users are very goal-driven. It seems to me that the department descriptions found on every page get in the way of the most desired content that users are looking to find. I suggest COLA move these descriptions to alternate pages within the site to help quicken searching. Alternately, I would place the most important content in its place. Items such as the ITS building location, contact information, and the UT home page link should take the place of the departmental paragraphs.

Scannability

Like I mentioned earlier, COLA’s ITS site contains too much lengthy text. Cola should take Nielsen’s advice Shorten text, bullet text and highlight the most important info.

Although the content on the LAITS site is not something I immediately require for my studies here at UT, I believe that if I had a goal, I would be extremely frustrated with the task of finding whatever it is I might need. The home page seems forgiving enough, but upon closer inspection you realize that without hunting and pecking through the site, you will not find what it is you need. Is the information I want in Audio Services or the Audio Catalog, or what about these media pages? I believe Nielsen would like the perceived simplicity upon entering the site, but without content description, it is up to the user to track down the information which would ultimately be its downfall (if there was a measure of profit such as with e-commerce based companies). The new site should try to hold on to its friendly appearance while adding much more information as to where a user would need to go to find what was needed. Nielsen states that web users are extremely goal driven, and I believe this website would slow down any search.
Another aspect that hurts the usability of the site is its intended navigation. This is tied to content because much of the links are embedded inside of the current bodies of the web pages. Even when first starting to create the current site map, redundancy could be easily seen. With casual surfing, I could see users going in circles in this site to find what they were looking for. This increases the time spent at the site as well as frustration for not being able to find what is needed.
With countless contact links coupled with the inability to flow through the site, I would assume that there are a lot of support emails being written asking for help. This is simply a waste of time and measures should be taken to correct this. If a problem is resolved through one person via contact information from the site, there is little guarantee that the problem would be reported as such to the webmasters. The content of the pages could include links to the contact page, instead of listing actual mailto: links. Then, if the content was not understandable, the person on the contact page that deals with problems could address it with the user and then report it to the appropriate webmaster.
All in all I believe the content to be weak and spaced out and should be condensed into a more satisfying informational website with fewer pages and fewer chances for redundancy.

Nielson chapter 3 and chapter 9 have some good usability insight that can be implemented in the LA ITS website. The writings of the LA ITS website are actually aligned with Nielson’s guideline. The texts use plain language; they are short, scanable and have a good page chunk that makes it easy to read. But I think a good web attitude that gives a sense of personality or humor would make it even better. This can be hard to implement but this is one area of improvement that I can think of. In addition, if there should be any changes for the writings. I think the text size for the Courses/Websites link should be enlarged. It is hard to browse through all the little texts to pick the right course.

The links at the LA ITS homepage are short and easy to scan. But the information on the links is not self explanatory. So users would still need to get more information about the links. When users click a link, there’s a new page that has a lot of writings and users have to scroll through the page to get an idea of what’s on the page. A stand out headlines with a short but explanatory sentence would make it much easier for browsers to know what’s on the page. I think the headlines should be should be more elaborated not just Video Services or Media Store.

The website has special features that can accommodate pictures animations or interactive media. Although Nielson highly suggested that Images and Multimedia features are to be kept minimal because it would take a long time to download. But these features are the things that make the web different from newspaper or magazines. We can still add more pictures and creativity to the web. Higher level pages should fewer pictures but specific pages that would be an interest of the browser could have more pictures. For example a link to a picture of where the location of the media store is or the picture of the media stores itself.

The homepage of the LA ITS site gives the impression that there will be a lot of white space, or at least minimal content. As you delve into the site, you are confronted with what seems like a Word Document - and you're expected to find the information you're searching for? This is not what Neilson is for, a website that causes viewers to waste time on a wild goose chase. Because of the word document type format, it causes the viewer to lose interest very quickly due to the unstructured layout. The viewer is simply overwhelmed by the amount of text, which is disguised by the use of small font.

The content just seems mismanaged and the small font does not help. I doubt the content itself will change, but the way that it is grouped and presented could. Many of the links (in which case there are too many) from the homepage are similar and could be grouped together. Instead of paragraphs, bulleted lists would allow for easier readability. This website could be designed to be minimal yet effective, for the different types of users. The types of users aren’t clearly defined, and a lot of the information is garbled together for these users. Distinguishing the information for the different users would be a vast improvement to the user-friendliness of the website. The links should also be more distinguished in size, color, etc and detailed with information so that first time users will know what it will lead to.

The COLA ITS website is lacking in many areas when compared to chapters 3 & 9 of Neilson’s book. First, the page titles are horrible; it is very difficult to tell them apart if you are a first time user. For example: “Classes”, “Course/Web Development”, and “Courses / Web Sites” all sound much too similar. There are also titles that if you were a first time user you wouldn’t have even the foggiest idea of what they were: “LACIL”, what’s that? There is also no way to tell what type of audience that this page is aimed at. There is no mention of it being affiliated with the university, and then there’s no telling if you get past that fact, what audience inside the university is supposed to be viewing this site. (i.e. students, professors, staff, etc) Next, once you get past the splash page the legibility of the text is fair to poor depending on which direction you chose to navigate. The worst of which is on the Classrooms page, where all the text is small, it’s very difficult to distinguish plain text from links and you are forced to scroll to see all the information that is provided. I think to solve the problem of being able to distinguish plain text from links other than the underline is to make them a different color, or bold them or anything at all to make them stand out. I also think that there should be some kind of consistency with the navigation links. From the splash page we had lots of images to click on, but after that they turn into small underlined pieces of text at the top of most pages. Yet, its not even consistent in that respect, if you look at the “Courses/Web Development” page the navigation is non-underlined text in line-separated columns. Consistency should be one of the number one things that you strive for when creating a website, or the user can become disoriented and confused. There is also a broken link with the “Funding / IT Grants” link if you try to navigate to it from anywhere but the initial splash page. I think that there are a lot of changes that can be made to the look and feel of the site, but that the content will probably remain pretty constant.

Hopefully, the COLA ITS website will change greatly from its current state, to a more user friendly sate described in Nielsen;s book. At first glance, the site doesn't seem to have any problems, it actually looks relatively simple and easy to navigate. Once you get past the first page of links, all of this changes. There are too many links to be an easily navigable website, there is too much information to take in, and the user becomes overwhelmed. One main problem with the subpages is the wealth of small text. There is a lot of it and it is way too small. The subpages lack visual elements of style and direction. There are no tabs, images, graphics, or anything to give a bit more visual sense and order - the visual elements that are there serve no purpose and add to the general confusion of the site. Along with this, there are too many links. These should be condensed for easier navigation.
The page also lacks direction for what sort of person the user might be, i.e. student, professor, etc. The users all have quite different reasons for visiting the page and in the jumble of links and icons on the first page, the cleanest of them all, the user still presumably cannot easily find what they are looking for. The page needs a visual hierarchy to direct users where to go and get what they need easily and quickly. Going with Nielsen;s minimalist theory of web design, the page is minimal, but not in an effective way. The wealth of information on the site need to be better organized and more easily attainable for the people who want to reach it.
The homepage is probably the best of all the pages, as it is clean, simple, uses images to convey the purposes of the link, yet it still needs work. Many of the links are similar, or could be grouped into the same category and the user would need to try several to find what he or she wants.

At first glance, the Liberal Arts ITS website appears to be very simple and easy to use. This is the case for some parts of the website. However, for other parts of the website this is not so true. The main navigation page for the most part is simple and easy to use, but it does have its faults. First and foremost, the text for the navigation is embedded in the images, so it is not resizable in the browser. It already appears small and a bit on the blurry side to me so that is not good. Also, for maximum readability it would be better if the site used colors with a higher rate of contrast, for example white background with black text (instead of blue text). Secondly, although all of the navigation buttons have their own specific titles, there is not much description of what each button leads to. A user should have at least a small idea of what kind of content a link will contain before he or she clicks on it. For example, if I were a first time user of the COLA ITS website, I would have no idea that the “LACIL” link on the main navigation page leads to a page about the “Liberal Arts Computer Instruction Lab”. Within the inner pages of the site, the text is separated with use of bold headlines and some bulleted lists so scanning for topics that you are interested in is possible. One specific of bad text usage is the “Courses/Websites” page, which has very small text. Some of the pages do have quite a bit of information on them and the content could be toned down either by taking out unnecessary text and by separating content into other related sub-pages that hold more specific information about a certain topic. There are two problems with having too much content on one page: First, it can be an eye strain trying to scan through a lot of content all at once; and second, it hassles the user by making he or she scroll. Most users will choose not to scroll very much, and if a lot of content is not within view of the initial range of their screen, they will never see the content. One thing that is very good for usability is the usage of specific titles for each page. The title that is displayed in the toolbar at the very top of the page corresponds with the content of each page. Overall, I think the COLA ITS site is a good start to a site with simplicity in mind, but there is some things that should be improved to make the wanted content easy to find and use.

PS. If a user saw this huge paragraph, you can bet they'd be pressing their "Back" button real quick.

I don’t think the content will change very much for the COLA ITS website. Almost every page has very little information. Because of the minimal text content, I doubt copy editing will be needed. However, lists and paragraphs can be reformatted to be more succinct and clear. As far as legibility of the text, the text color may be changed to black or a darker blue to assist those with visual impairments or different screen settings.
Although recommended in the reading, I don’t like how links are presented in the text. In the middle a bullet on a list, a link is there. Even though the most important words are highlighted, I still feel as if there can be a link at the end of a bullet in a list that says, “more” or suggests another way to linking to that page. Otherwise, I think the navigation lacks order and uniform. The navigation on the homepage should also be links. Not every browser or computer will be able to load the images or view them. Text links with images as accents or decoration would help all users.
For links labeled as means to contact people, but are actually mailto links, the word “contact” should be changed to “email.” Many users, including myself, may mistakenly click on it expecting a form or another webpage to open. However, we may experience the stalling of our system as our email client opens up. In respect to email and contacting people, perhaps a form should be installed instead of having to open an application or an email provider website. By having a form, all email addresses and persons of contact would be in a central location. If someone wanted to contact the person in charge of rent equipment, she would simply have to select this option from the menu and type our her comment. Also, by having a form, the likelihood of spammers receiving the address would decrease.
Other than these factors, I think the webpage has little changes for usability that need to be made. I’m more scared of the presentation changes that may be made. This may alter load time and location of text and navigation.

The usability of the LA ITS can improve with the specifications discussed in the Nielsen readings. The content of the site isn't too overwhelming. The LA ITS site uses informative headings that are easily located by the boldface type. However, a different font could further aid the visual location of these headers. Nielsen discussed content that overflowed the page, thus forcing the visitor to scroll. This issue isn't prominent throughout the LA ITS. Some contents are bulleted which is good because users can scan the page more easily. Site titles are used correctly from the Nielson specification. The titles inform the user what the main site is, Liberal Arts ITS, followed by a dash and the section they are currently viewing. This will help visitors who bookmarked the page or are viewing their history. Links are only distinguishable by the underline, thus are highly difficult to locate. This should be improved by changing the font color of the links in addition to the underlined text. Main navigation is placed at the header without the need for scrolling. This meets the specifications of Neilson because this allows visitors to compare sections and pick a desirable section without having to use his or her memory to memorize the sections and then scroll. From the HOME acronym, this site does not seem to be updated often, or there is no blatant indication of it. The quality of the content is informative and the site is mostly text so the download time is minimal. The splash page makes it not so easy to use. Image reduction isn't needed because images on the LA ITS site isn't abundant. There is a broken link to "Funding: IT Grants" section. This gives a bad image to the LA ITS site. Neilson discusses limiting the use of within page links, the LA ITS site is riddled with these. Each section of the site contains a brief description of the section. This meets the specifications of Nielson, but some of the descriptions could be further shortened.

The first thing I notice when I visit the COLA ITS site is the massive amount of white space. If one was to visit the site by going through the main Liberal Arts site, the first thing they’d notice is the drastic change between the format of the COLA site and the COLA ITS site. This can cause continuity problems and might confuse the viewer and make them wonder if they’re even in the right place. Also, the only indication on the COLA ITS website that it’s even a part of the University of Texas is the icon at the bottom left. To me, it looks like an upside down microphone more than a UT symbol. Also, there’s no indication that it’s a link. In fact, none of the links on the site, at first glance, make indication that they’re links. The only way one knows that they are links is if one scrolls over the image to see the finger pointer icon associated with links. The next thing I notice is that unless one specifically knows what they’re looking for, they’ll have a hard time locating what that want to find. There are no descriptions as to what follows in each link, and the acronyms don’t help at all. A web designer should not assume that the audience of the website will know exactly where to go and what they’re looking for. Also, the images used for the links don’t change color or give any indication as to if they’ve been visited before by the user or not. Furthermore, because the links are images, they cannot be easily resized. Next, there’s no clear audience that this site is directed towards. Some of the sites, such as the LACIL and the Audio Catalog, seem geared towards students, while much of the others are geared towards faculty. Another feature which is missing that would be very helpful is a search function. A user could just type in a phrase or keyword and search the pages within the COLA ITS site and see a number of results, if any, that contain what they’re looking for and go straight to that source.
The COLA ITS site could change in a number of ways. Hopefully it will change in somewhat of an aesthetic way. It should try to fit in more with the COLA site and also not have as much white space. Also, the site could add some way to display what’s new on the site or current events within the COLA ITS department. The aforementioned search function would be tremendously useful. Better descriptions of what each link contains and the phase out of acronyms would greatly improve the site. Everything I’ve mentioned, if taken into consideration, would help improve the usability of the website. I’m sure I’ve missed some issues, but the ones I have noticed do need to be noted and improved upon in my opinion.

At first glance the COLA ITS is a bit deceiving. The first impression of the homepage is the excessive amount of white space and therefore the minimal amount of content. This can be deceiving in the sense that because content is limited one would most likely believe that the creators objective was simply just to be straight forward and cut out the aesthetic appeal. Their goal most obviously seems like was to allow the user to come in, click on what they need and that’s it. This is the assumption I myself made, but after browsing through the ITS website one realizes they were in fact misled. The site is actually rather unorganized as many of the links on various pages don’t draw any parallels. And once finding the area you need to go off the homepage, you’d assume what you needed would be there but that too was not always the case. The best way to fix this would be to use chunking to consolidate the categories and then follow a navigation map which would make everything interconnected, ours ITS site however did not use this process and obviously lacks because of it. Also when someone is accessing the ITS site he/she most likely will know what they are browsing for, however as a web designer one cannot assume this and the ITS also made the error of doing this. The site needs to describe its links on the homepage, or maybe separate links for students/faculty and start from there so a person has a better idea of where they need to go. Because of all these complications most web users will head elsewhere to find what they are looking for. And Nielson discusses this in his text. This site itself needs to expand however past navigation it needs to be more appealing and more pleasing to its audience. It needs to attract viewers and make things much simpler such as condense the page to cancel out the need for scrolling on the homepage, as this is unnecessary because content on this page is very limited. This site needs a lot of work, however its main original objective is a good one. It just needs to be updated to keep the viewer interested, be more informative (what is LACIL) in explaining the purpose of its links, and last but not least become more aesthetically pleasing as it lacks a lot in this area…

When first going into the LA ITS Site it seems like a well organized site. As you start browsing through the content you find it really difficult to find what you are looking for. Viewing the homepage you are given images and text. There aren't any descriptions that leads the viewer to what they want to see. There isn't news on the site that informs the viewer what is being updated either. Navigation is easy because there is not much text on the page except for the name of a page you would like to go to. The home page was kept simple, but could have been improved with larger text for people that can not see well. Users are going to find it hard to read the text when viewing other pages because with the white background and light non bold text, it would make reading on screen difficult. There isn't a search engine so that you can find what your looking for. The site seems unorganized because not all the pages seem to correlate. Some of the pages are not for students. On the LA ITS site, there is a Bulk purchase and funding page which faculty would most likely look at. The usability of the site is not easy for students. Sites are suppose to direct the user to what they are looking for, says Neilson. When a user starts from the LA ITS site home they do not know what else to do because they do not have anymore information when they are there except for titles. The site is simplistic which is good. The minimal use of graphics makes browsing fast. On the audio catalog you are able to view media. If there were a lot of graphics on the pages it would take alittle longer to load pages. The site sticks to simplicity, but does not leave the viewer wanting to stay because usability is not up to par. The LA ITS site will probably change by making navigation more easier and detailed, according to Neilson. Text will be more visible and clear. Pages that are not for students will probably stay on the site, but be in a sub section. A search engine will be implemented for students who can't find what they are looking for. Pages will relate to the homepage and text will be more organized and useful so that users will want to stay. With all these changes it will provide better content and usability to the user and maintain a simple design.

One of life's mantras is "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." When it comes to web design, first impressions are critical. In today's fast-paced society, audiences have a broad horizon of choices when they surf the web and they do not have time to struggle with weak design or content. They want a clean-cut message presenting in an aesthetic way. The first thing the user sees upon entering a website is the visual. A simple, organized design that maximizes the use of minimal graphics/images is ideal. The very first thing that users come across when they open the LAITS site is an overload of unnecessary graphics that do no make efficient use of white space. The text of graphics is not as user-friendly, because it is not easily resizable. The texts on the graphics of the LAITS site are particularly difficult to read because of the size and quality of the font. The website does not give immediate benefit to the user because of the general ambiguity of the content; the navigation is vague and the purpose of the site is unclear. The current LAITS site seems to presume that the user already knows exactly what he or she is looking for and how to find it. Once the user arrives at the secondary level of the website, the navigation is squeezed at the top of each page. Not only is the text very small, but also the location of the links is inefficient because it requires the user to scroll back to the top in order to navigate. The current color scheme of the web pages makes it difficult to distinguish links, headings, information, and the main navigation. It is hard for the reader to look through all of the information without feeling overwhelmed by text.
The content of the site might change in relation to usability in several ways. Text links will make navigation smoother and more dynamic (font size, color, and style can be changed easily using CSS). The splash page will use space so that important information is more central and links arranged in a more organized manner. Acronyms such as “LACIL” will be defined. Navigation will be more clearly categorized and labeled, so that users know exactly where to find information. The color scheme and font will be more conducive to setting apart the importance of each area of the website.

The content on the LA ITS site is organized in such a way that it is difficult to find what you want. Some of the links are for faculty only, some for students only, and some for both faculty and students. It takes a long time to find what you want. According to Nielsen, web content must give immediate benefits to the users or they will allocate their time to other sites. The LA ITS site can be confusing because by looking at it you have no idea its content is associated with the University of Texas. The LA ITS homepage does use simplicity as a design technique; however, when you click one of the links, there is no organization. The data contained in the page has no structure. It basically looks like someone started typing a word document and did not format it properly. The content of the new site will have more structure and separation between paragraphs that contain differing information. The site will also include links within the page to help with navigation. One problem with the current LA ITS site is that you cannot link back to the homepage without having to scroll to the top of the page and click the link. That problem can be addressed by positioning the links on the side of the page, and possibly on the bottom as well. The LA ITS site will have high-quality content that is relevant to the user’s needs and it will be easier to use. It will also be updated frequently so new information is always available. Visitors to the LA ITS site are looking for specific information. They are extremely goal driven. Therefore, the content needs to be delivered to the user in such a way that answers can be found quickly and easily. The current LA ITS site has graphics for links on the homepage. Nielsen states that the amount of graphics on web pages should be minimized because of the long download times they require. The new site will use text for links which should help the page load faster. Some of the pages within the site are full of a lot of text. Most users do not want to take the time to read all the text. The new site will present the material in an up-front kind of way so that the user can tell what it is about in a simple glance. Hopefully these changes will increase the usability of the LA ITS site and improve the way in which it delivers its content to the user.