Resource Library

US Government ‘Research-Based Web-Design and Usability Guidelines’

Download this free book at http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html

Conduct Your Own Usability Study

From the STC 2002 Region 7 Conference hosted by STC Canada West Coast:

Conduct Your Own Usability Study (PDF 165 KB) and Extra Notes (PDF 69 KB)
Learn how to prepare, facilitate, and analyze the results of a usability test. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn the basic techniques to run a usability test on your own. Sample usability test documents will be provided. You’ll also have the opportunity to practice these techniques during the session. Intended audience is any technical communicator who is new to usability testing.

Sample documents for conducting a usability study:

Explanation of Intervention (PDF 68 KB)
Non-disclosure Agreement (PDF 36 KB)
Receipt of Gift Form (PDF 47 KB)
Video/Audio Tape Consent Form (PDF 48 KB)

Sample documents from a usability study for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Web Site:
Data Collection Form (PDF 91 KB)
Instructions (PDF 62 KB)
Observer Guidelines (PDF 74 KB)
Screener (PDF 103 KB)
Plan (PDF 75 KB)
Report (PDF 87 KB)
Tasks (PDF 49 KB)

Beverly Arnoldy, Usability Northwest LLC, Ocean Park, Washington
Kristina Ricks, Timberline Software, Beaverton, Oregon

Example Personas

Personas and scenarios make your users and your users’ work come alive. They engage project teams in ways that traditional user profiles and task analysis don’t usually achieve. They make you - and the developers and other specialists you work with - think in new ways about your product’s users. And that can help you bring more value to your work. Attached are example personas created at the Feb ‘06 Workshop, “Going beyond “Know they user” - Developing and using personas and scenarios”: Redish_workshop_personas.zip.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

Web usability expert, Jakob Nielsen, regularly publishes research and articles online at http://www.useit.com

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