Practical Usability

Please note: This course has been discontinued, but may still be offered as an In-Company programme tailored to your organisation. Please contact us on 020 8874 2718 if you have any queries in this regard or email John Whitley at john@bookhouse.co.uk.

Is poor website usability holding your business back?

Improving the usability of your website or CD-ROM can be done without any specialist knowledge or tools.

With the basic principles and practical techniques you will learn on this course, you will be able to improve the usability of your website or CD-ROM.

In one day, you'll learn how to:

identify common usability issues
run a simple usability test
measure and quantify usability problems
work with a website developer to implement improvements.

This is a practical course with plenty of exercises, aimed at people with no specialist technical knowledge.

Programme

What is usability?
- Definitions of usability
- The five quality components of usability
How is usability measured?
- The System Usability Scale (SUS)
- Common usability metrics
- Exercise: Using SUS to quickly measure usability
Rule-of-thumb (‘heuristic’) evaluations
- Choosing appropriate heuristics
- Uses and limitations of heuristics
- Exercise: a simple heuristic evaluation
Improving the usability of links and buttons
- What users want from a link title
- Examples of good and bad links
- Exercise: Writing better link titles
Content usability
- Key principles for usable writing
- Search engine optimisation
Writing unbiased questions
- Main types of question
- Exercise: Writing questions
Planning and running a usability test
- Choosing what to test and when to test it
- Creating a test plan
- Recruiting test participants
- Writing a test script
- Observing and note taking
- Exercise: Asking questions and observing results
Usability test recording tools
- Video equipment
- Software
Reporting your findings
- Common industry formats for usability test reporting
- Lightweight report formats
- Creating actionable results
Working with developers
- Communicating your findings
- Common issues

Who will benefit from this course?

website editors, managers and commissioners who have an interest in improving the overall level of customer satisfaction with their website.

Your tutor

Gordon Plant runs User Analytics, a usability company based in Bath UK. His clients have included Arts Council England, Learning Skills Network, Environment Agency, Harcourt Education and many small and medium sized businesses. Gordon also lectures in usability at Bath Spa University.

We also offer Search Engine Optimisation, Writing and Editing for the Web 1, Writing and Editing for the Web 2 and Web 2.0: Opportunities and Threats.

Note that most of our open courses can also be run as in-company events.

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Dates:

Price: £+VAT (a number of discounts are available).

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