Census Bureau

Abstract

Project Definition:
The Towson University project team assisted in the evaluation and redesign of a legacy (current) Intranet site. The Intranet site serves as a User-Centered Design (UCD) knowledge base for census bureau employees. The current site is accessible at www.census.gov/srd/userworks/index.htm.
The project team helped in the development of a new site by developing a set of usability goals based on specific user tasks.

Setting Usability Goals:
Usability goals are a set of quantifiable standards and metrics by which the current site's usability can be evaluated. We assigned relevant site tasks to the target user population, which consists of:

• Administrative applications designers and developers
• Project managers
  
• Hardware, software, Web site and intranet site designers
  
• Hardware, software, Web site and intranet site developers
  
• Hardware, software, Web site and intranet site testers
  
• Persons responsible for any electronic product design
  
• IBM American Fact Finder contractors
  
• Census Bureau Usability Lab personnel

The target users for this Intranet site possess a wide range of usability and User-Centered Design issues. Therefore the site must be designed to accommodate the needs of both experienced designers as well as those who have little or no experience with usability issues. Sample user tasks were created with both of theses profiles in mind. Those inexperienced in usability should be able to quickly find introductory information on what usability is and why it is important. Experienced users should also be able to find the in-depth articles and resources they desire.


Introduction

The Towson project team selected the following user tasks.

• Task 1: What does the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Priority 1 say about the use of frames?
  
• Task 2: What is the URL of the software developers' tool Browser Sizer.
  
• Task 3: Find the definition of a Style Guide.
  
• Task 4: Find the list of the six IBM Web Design Guidelines.
• Task 5: What Lab Facilities are available?
• Task 6: What is the rule of thumb on how much money usability engineering saves?

For each user task the Towson project team established the following, in reference to the various user groups:

• Task importance to the user.
  
• An acceptable task performance level.
  
• An acceptable time performance level.
  
• An acceptable user satisfaction level.

These acceptance levels were established for each user group for each task. The detailed results of this analysis follow:

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  next >>