CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javahtmlstandardsusability
naw naw
naw naw

Reputation: 1

web page usability

Can low level metrics (such as word count) measure over web interface elements cover web page and site usability?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 102

Answers (1)

bpeterson76
bpeterson76

Reputation: 12870

The thing about usability is that no matter how much researchers and engineers try to quantify usability, it can't be accurately measured as a whole. For example, let's say that Google, with it's sub-500 words and one sprited-image is a very "useable" site. Now, let's do a page with one image (black on black writing) on a black screen....let's add a javascript blink to it. The second could have exactly the same amount of elements and the same amount of Javascript as your standard, but one is clearly better. By the same token, you could use word count as a measure, but what happens when you hit a site that's all flash and has no forward-facing text to speak of. It might be a beautiful site (I use that loosely because I'm not a fan of Flash) but by your test's measures, it's a complete failure.

Then you get into concepts like location precedence, separating content in images vs content in text (not all text is actually text on a site), color palettes, expected vs actual functionality, accessibility, compatibility with various browsers and technologies, etc.

There's a reason that testers are paid to interact with enterprise-level sites, graphic designers are paid to make layouts, and UI Engineers (like me) are paid to figure out how to effectively make the interface function effectively with the user...it's because there isn't a way to replace us (yet).

Never mind the fact that the "experts" still haven't figured out exactly what to test for. For every Jakob Nielson finding, there's several others that contradict his findings. Remember, while there's an accepted standard out there (W3c) the browser family with the biggest market share still doesn't entirely accept it, meaning that w3c isn't necessarily a 100% valid singular testing standard (as much as that hurt to write....)

Of course, you could just try the HiPPO. I hear it has a very good API and is always right.

Upvotes: 1

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