Sep 5 - McDermand, NIELSEN VERSUS NIELSEN: A USABILITY ANALYSIS OF TELEVISION HOMEPAGES

NIELSEN VERSUS NIELSEN: A USABILITY ANALYSIS OF TELEVISION HOMEPAGES.
AMANDA MCDERMAND, B.A.
A THESIS IN MASS COMMUNICATIONS
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS.
August, 2006


Usability

Usability, as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS, n.d.), is the quality measurement of a user’s experience when interacting with a user-operated device, including a Web site.
Usability is an issue for all Web sites, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains a site dedicated to helping designers to create more user-friendly sites. Many of the recommendations are based on the department’s 2003 study, which resulted in published Web design and usability guidelines for government site designers (USDHHS, 2003).

Jakob Nielsen’s work, which is cited many times in that report, will be used as a guideline for determining usability scores in this study.
Jakob Nielsen is known as the father of Web usability (MacGregor, et al., 2002). ...Critics say his approach to usability is too formulaic and sacrifices aesthetic appeal.
Cloninger (2000) mediated in this debate of usability versus design and explained that usability experts were rational, left-brained, science-oriented, and involved in doing whereas designers were intuitive, right-brained, artsy, and emotional.
These differences naturally placed designers and usability experts on opposite ends of the Web design debate, but both were important in creating a masterful Web site.
Engholm (2002) thoroughly discussed this dispute in relation to design theory, focusing first on the ideals of designers, then the purposes of usability experts. Designers argued for increased focus on graphics, aesthetics, and the entertainment capabilities of the Web while usability experts focused on function and content, with decreased priority given to graphic features. The author stated that both positions were important, since each have made an impression on the design history of the Web. Finally, Engholm negotiated a mediated position advocating a balance between form and function, and used this approach to criticize the development of digital style design.

This research focuses on how homepages score with each other based on established usability guidelines, or heuristics. Heuristic evaluation involves judging an interface, here a homepage, with a recognized usability principle (Head, 1999).

Harpel-Burke (2005) used this method to compare usability scores for library Web sites with corporate site usability statistics presented by Nielsen and Tahir (2002). ...In a similar fashion, these heuristics created by Nielsen and Tahir (2002) will be used to calculate usability scores for the homepages in this study.

Expert evaluation is one method of usability inspection, which will be used in the present study to determine the usability of television homepages. Jakob Nielsen is a prominent figure in Web site usability (MacGregor, et al., 2002) and his guidelines will be used in this study.

Usability inspection methods help designers create a more usable site that is focused on the needs of their users. Jakob Nielsen is cited many times in usability research as an expert in the field. His recommendations provided a framework for Harpel-Burke (2005) to examine the usability of library Web sites. A modified version of Nielsen’s recommendations, similar to the Harpel-Burke (2005) study will be used in this study.

No research thus far has investigated relationships among features, usability, and design of television Web sites. This study will attempt to close these research gaps and also provide empirical evidence of the state of television Web site features, usability, and design.

My Comments: This review particularly concentrates on Usability, i.e. meaning of Usability. Hence, I may come back again in future, and read through her entire Theses.

References that I may want to read further in future:
Cloninger, C. (2000). Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus. Society for Technical Communication, 5, 1, 14-15.
Ebenezer, C. (2003). Usability evaluation of a NHS library website. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 20, 134-142.
Engholm, I. (2002). Digital style history: The development of graphic design on the Internet. Digital Creativity, 13, 193-211.
Harpel-Burke, P. (2005). Library homepage design at medium-sized universities: A comparison to commercial homepages via Nielsen and Tahir. OCLC Systems & Services, 21, 193-208.
Molich, R., Ede, M. R., Kaasgaard, K., & Karyukin, B. (2004). Comparative usability evaluation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 23, 65-74.
Nielsen, J. (n.d.). Summary of usability inspection methods. Retrieved February 21, 2006, from http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/inspection_summary.html
Nielsen, J. (1999, November 14). When bad design elements become the standard. Retrieved February 27, 2006, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991114.html
Nielsen, J. (2000, October 29). Flash: 99% bad. Retrieved February 27, 2006, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html
Nielsen, J. (2004, September 13). The need for Web design standards. Retrieved April 28, 2006, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040913.html
Nielsen, J., & Tahir, M. (2002). Homepage usability: 50 Websites deconstructed. Indianapolis: New Riders.
United States Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Usability basics. Retrieved February 19, 2006, from http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html
United States Department of Health and Human Services. (2003, September). Research-based Web design & usability guidelines. Retrieved February 18, 2006, from http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html
VandeCreek, L. M. (2005). Usability analysis of a northern Illinois university libraries’ website: A case study. OCLC Systems & Services, 21, 181-192.