Web Usability Blog

There are now lots of ways to gain insight into the user experience:

How many times have you tried using a website that just makes you want to give up? Either they just don't work, you can't find what you're looking for or the the company in question does not meet your expectation of share your values.

We know budgets can be tight and often stretching to a fully-fledged usability project is just not achievable. For anyone in that boat, here are our top tips for running your own usability session on the cheap...

Organisational change is like steering a big ship – hard work and slow to turn.

Booking airline tickets, getting a mortgage, designing trainers or reading favourite news, chatbots are being used by customers for all sorts of things. But how might your organisation use one and where should you start?

Most current chatbots are not very good. This makes it very easy for people to be sceptical about them and ignore the whole approach. However, this is often because the user’s needs were not fully understood or because they have not been adequately tested with users.

You have probably heard the buzz about chat interfaces and artificial intelligence and how this is the next big thing. In this blog we try and explain what they are and why they probably do matter.

Over the years we have undertaken usability testing on several University websites. I have blogged before about why so many University sites are so unusable, and concluded that the problems are primarily organisational not technical. Our recent experience seems to confirm that this is still the case.

I have a confession to make – one that is a bit embarrassing. As a researcher, I know you must not trust your own opinions but should look at the evidence, because often our instinctive view of world - or of people’s behaviour – is wrong!

Panic call from an 87 year old relative of mine last week – the TV had stopped working! For 87 she is pretty hale and hearty, she lives independently, drives, goes out walking the dog each day and attends lots of WI, Probus and U3A events so she is not stupid – indeed probably well above average for her age. However the TV had beaten her.