Museo&WebPlanning Kit for a Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums |
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User-centredThe Quality Principles Handbook says: IntroductionThis section examines the fifth quality principle, that «A quality Website must be user-centred, taking into account the needs of users, ensuring relevance and ease of use through responding to evaluation and feedback». It:
CommentaryThe user-centred principle focuses on the need to serve first and foremost the requirements of the end user. A Web site is essentially a user facility, providing information and services to the end user; thus, it is critical that the user finds the Website useful, easy to use and attractive. User-centricity has a number of important aspects, which include:
These aspects correspond to almost all the other quality principles, particularly transparency and effectiveness – this reflects the central and critical nature of this principle. Relevance, user interface and navigation are discussed with these other principles – this section focuses on:
ConsultationIt is sensible for any organisation that is planning, designing or implementing a Website to consult with users at every stage. This will help to ensure that the Website meets user needs and expectations. It will avoid the provision of a service that nobody wants. This is particularly the case for cultural Websites, where there is a strong likelihood that the organisation developing a Website has a great deal of sectoral experience. This will mean that the team involved is likely to be comfortable with terminology, jargon, methodologies and knowledge frameworks which are specific to the cultural sector. However, the Website will often be aimed at the general public, who may find the results difficult to understand, jargon-heavy or oddly structured. By involving samples of the target audience (e.g. users with visual impairments or school children, or late Internet adopters), a realistic grounding for site planning will be achieved. Focus groups of end users should be involved in every stage of the project. Their work should be to review and provide feedback on those aspects of the project which have most impact on users:
Formal testing and collection of feedback in the form of questionnaires and interviews should be used, so that empirical, rather than anecdotal, evidence for design decisions is available. Particularly useful is usability testing with individual users, where users are given a task and then observed carrying out that task. The observation, which must not include guidance on how to use the Website, will show where navigation and presentation is not clear to users. InvolvementAfter the site is completed and ‘goes live’, facilities must be presented for users to provide feedback and opinions on the site, its content, the user interface, navigation, etc. Such facilities might include an online version of a feedback questionnaire, a free-form comments page, etc. ContributionUsers can also contribute to the richness of a cultural Website by enabling users to create additional content, linked to existing items or exhibits. The stories, memories and material created and contributed by the general public are often very fascinating and unique cultural material – a cultural Website can use its wide reach and interactive facilities to stimulate the creation of such content. CriteriaAffinché un sito web possa essere considerato centrato sull’utente dovrebbero essere soddisfatti i criteri sotto riportati. Il grado di centralità dell’utente riflette il numero dei criteri soddisfatti; perciò un sito può essere, ad esempio, centrato sull’utente al 75%, se non sono stati soddisfatti tutti i criteri. The following criteria should be met if a site is to be considered user-centred. The degree of user-centricity reflects the number of these criteria which are met; thus a site can be ‘75% user-centred’ if not all the criteria are met. Some of the criteria overlap across the quality principles. As noted above, user-centricity is so important that it includes elements of transparency, effectiveness, maintenance and accessibility.
ChecklistThis section presents a number of points against which a site can be checked.
Practical testsThis section suggests some simple, pragmatic tests and questions to be asked in order to assess how completely your Website meets the user-centred principle
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© Minerva
Project 2005-03, last revision 2006-03-30, edited by WP5, Committee for
the development of a prototype of public cultural websites. |