The Unami usability test results

This Wednesday we had about 20 or people come and test the site I have been working on: unamidelaware.com.

The results were interesting, but mostly along with what I expected. As with anytime I design a Web site (or write an article, or cook a meal…) I am aware of things I wish I did but just didn’t have the time or capability to do so.

For example ,many complained over the buggy-ness of the Flash slideshow. The slideshow was a cheap tool that I purchased because I did not have the expertise to code it myself. But a quick run down of the complaints and what we are doing to change them.

• Right rail navigation is poor, roll overs shouldn’t be a way to navigate to articles
• There is no indication that this is a Delaware related page
• The video player is not very inviting
• Our “stories we wish we wrote” is the only text on home page, and it misleads users to believe that its our main content
• We are having major IE7 problems due to the JS-Kit comment system. This is not to say that s the fault of the script, but it may not be playing nice with whatever other scripts we have going.
• There is no real “information hierarchy” to our site. This is because 1. There is no CMS, and 2. We are only putting out one article a day.
• People clicked on videos
• Our learn/connect/multimedia box was confusing as it was before the article

I’m at work with some changes, but this test essentially proved to me:

• Videos are the next big thing for news, but they have to be presented inline with the article
• The image first mindset doesn’t exist. People want to be able to digest information quickly by skimming and text allows that
• You need a CMS, without question
• People still like to browse by categories, date, and topics
• Users aren’t that impressed by links to other related Web sites
• The cleaner, the better.

The old design (left) vs the new (right):