WIREDGOV

The fact that usability determines usage (or not) of websites is the key message of The design of the online user experience: more to this than meets the eye the new briefing from Socitm.

The briefing reminds readers that the judgements of a group of well-intentioned, amateur web authors, providing content as an add on to their main jobs, are no substitute for a full-time, centralised web team, whose members are professionally trained and have access to resources for user testing.

To illustrate the fact that usability remains an issue for many local authority websites, the briefing reports on a user testing exercise, commissioned over the summer by Socitm, for some common tasks undertaken by visitors to social care pages of council websites.

The poor results arise to a significant degree from content authors who have not been properly trained and a management process that relies on people doing content management as a part-time activity.

By contrast, the briefing reports on the story of Ian Thomson, now a solutions architect at West Sussex County Council, who is the first person ever to have achieved a new international accreditation in user experience from the Nielsen Norman Group, one of whose founders is Jakob Nielson, probably the most well-known authority on the online user experience in the world.

Details of the course he attended to achieve the accreditation are presented in the briefing, along with Ian’s 10 key learning points.