Lost in W3C Web Space
Lessons from the WAI Site Redesign
W3C 2005 Technical Plenary Presentation Material

Preamble

Shawn Lawton Henry

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach (EOWG)

Chris Hass

American Institutes of Research (AIR) Human Factors Research and Design

usability testing

observing real people completing real tasks

Usability Testing on Existing Site: w3.org/WAI

WAI Report

WAI Sub-Site

• WAI goals
• WAI work
• ... lost
• Myth...

Find all that hard work...

w3.org/WAI

Find information on making data tables accessible

Redesign

• WAI Web Site Redesign Project page
• Priority for WAI
• Redesign goal: Increased use of WAI resources due to better usability
• Note:
  • not related to development of accessibility guidelines and techniques
  • ancillary to WAI technical work

User-Centered Design (UCD) Process

• Vision
• Users
• Tasks
• Information architecture (IA)
• Visual design
• Iterative prototyping & usability testing

WAI Site Vision

• ...welcoming, encourages visitors to use the site...
• implements best practices: an inspiring model for graphic design/visual appeal, accessibility, usability, technology; is elegant, uncluttered
• ...
• is seen as the definitive (re)source, authoritative, credible; comprehensive, yet not overwhelming
• fosters accessibility adoption and "evangelism"; increases positive attitudes towards accessibility; is inspiring

User Analysis

• Primary user groups:
  • People new to Web accessibility
  • Web developers
• Most in two categories:
  • "Techies"
  • "Fuzzies"
• Keys:
  • Many different users, different characteristics & motivations
  • Almost all low knowledge of Web accessibility; don't know the basics of Web accessibility, WAI, W3C

Tasks

• I need an overview of Web accessibility for [a report to my boss / an article / my own curiosity]
• What do I need to do to make my [data tables, forms, etc.] accessible?
• I'm a member of a WAI WG and need to get details on the next face-2-face
  

Information Architecture

Used UCD data to develop… www.w3.org/WAI/ut2/

Prototype Redesign Status

• Information architecture (IA) and layout: Pretty much done, few tweaks in progress
• Visual design: still needs some tweaking
• Markup: a mess still from rapid prototyping
• WAI logo: just a placeholder
• Links: only a couple dozen hooked up

Try again

www.w3.org/WAI/ut2/

Find information on making data tables accessible…

Usability Testing

• Observing real people completing real tasks
• Test 1 on existing site
  quantify & prioritize issues
• Test 2 on prototype (some draft initial results from last week)
  confirm & refine

Describing the Site

Existing:

• good information but hard to get to and decipher
• navigation on this site is often different from 99% of what you see out there
• It feels like the page gets developed as information becomes developed. The overall site is not taken into consideration.

Existing:

• hard to navigate
• confusing
• exclusive, like a club I don't belong to
• overwhelming with information
• low budget
• stark
• challenging

Redesign Prototype

• easy on the eyes
• pretty quick
• user friendly
• very professional
• very informative
• easy to use
• neat interface
• very organized
• clean-cut: a neat design

Usability Testing Clips

Subjective Ratings

• Scale 1-7
• Existing: 4.5
  Redesign: 5.5
• Key
  • 1.0-2.9
  • 3.0-4.9
  • 5.0-7.0
• Redesign includes existing /TR/ format

Task Completion

Motivated?

• Challenges: time, priorities, skills...
• Yet worth it!
  • Meet W3C goals, your WG goals, e.g.,
    • promote specifications, encourage implementations
    • increase the efficiency of WG and Team
    • …
• E.g., Cisco intranet redesign:
  • average task 17.6 seconds less [WAI redesign many mins]
  • faster performance saves Cisco $3 million per year from reduced time navigate from homepage to subsite

"Discount Usability"

• Why? Prioritize
• Users, e.g.,
  • Public ?
    • “Elevator pitch”
    • Management overview
    • Business case
    • Specs
  • WG ?
• Tasks
• IA
• …

Questions ? Comments .

wai-site-comments@w3.org

for publicly archived list that WAI Site Redesign Task Force can see

Shawn: shawn@w3.org

direct to me

Chris: CHass@air.org

AIR usability testing

Last modified by $Author: shawn $ on $Date: 2005/03/22 19:30:18 $

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