I originally had not planned to attend this particular session. I had planned to go to "Emerging Search Technologies." For better or for worse, the speaker for "Emerging Search Technologies" couldn't be there as planned (I don't know why) so I had to find something else. This session looked potentially useful so I went here.
All-in-all I think this was a useful session. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't that useful in it, but it was a nice discussion of usability and by the end of it I was convinced that we need to be doing more with usability. At the bare minimum I think the speakers made a very strong argument for Google Analytics, which can be installed onto the website and be used to track (broadly) user behavior on your site so you can see where they are clicking. This is something we've wondered about for a long time and I can't think it would be an entirely bad thing to look into using this to see if the way we think people use our site is indeed how they are using it.
Some other pieces of software were also mentioned that can use webcams and screen recording to track how users use the site in a more formal usability study. This is certainly something we may we may wish to consider doing and it could provide some useful information, although it would require explicit volunteers and a more concerted effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment