Methods for Identifying Usability Problems with Web Sites

The dynamic nature of the Web poses problems for usability evaluations. Development times are rapid and changes to Web sites occur frequently, often without a chance to reevaluate the usability of the entire site. New advances in Web developments change user expectations. In order to incorporate usability evaluations into such an environment, we must produce methods that are compatible with the development constraints. We believe that rapid, remote, and automated evaluation techniques are key to ensuring usable Web sites. In this paper, we describe three studies we carried out to explore the feasibility of using modified usability testing methods or non-traditional methods of obtaining information about usability to satisfy our criteria of rapid, remote, and automated evaluation. Based on lessons learned in these case studies, we are developing tools for rapid, remote, and automated usability evaluations. Our future work includes using these tools on a variety of Web sites to determine 1) their effectiveness compared to traditional evaluation methods, 2) the optimal types of sites and stages of development for each tool, and 3) tool enhancements.