Lingua inglese 1

Criterion #3: OBJECTIVITY

1. For any given piece of information, is it clear what the company's motivation is for providing it?

2. If there is any advertising on the page, is it clearly differentiated from the informational content?

Criterion #4: CURRENCY

1. Are there dates on the page to indicate:

a. When the page was written?

b. When the page was first placed on the Web?

c. When the page was last revised?

2. Are there any other indications that the material is kept current?

3. For financial information, is there an indication it was filed with the SEC and is the filing date listed?

4. For material from the company's annual report, is the date of the report listed?

Criterion #5: COVERAGE

1. Is there an indication that the page has been completed, and is not still under construction?

2. If describing a product, does the page include an adequately detailed description of the product?

3. Are all of the company's products described with an adequate level of detail?

4. Is the same level of information provided for all sections or divisions of the company?

Lezione 10/04/24

What is usability?

Usability means making dygital products and systems easier to use, and matching them more closely to

o user needs and requirements. It focuses on communication.

Usability is about:

Effectiveness – can users complete tasks, achieve goals with the product, do what they want to do?

o Efficiency – how much effort do users require to do this? (Often measured in time)

o Satisfaction – what do users think about the products ease of use?

o

Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction are affected by:

who is using the product? Are they highly traines and experienced users, or novices?

The users:

o what are the users trying to do with the product does it support what tehy want to do with it?

Their goals: –

o where and how is the product being used?

The usage situation (or ‘context of use’) –

o “accessability”

Usability should not be confused with as this is purely concerned with the functions and features of the

product and has no bearing on whether users are able to use them or not. Increased accessability does not mean

improved usability!

The role of the HOMEPAGE

Magazine cover the main topic, the most important information about something;



Your face to the world it’s how the company presents something to the world (identity card);



Artwork it’s a physical object that may have an aesthetic and/or conceptual value;



Company receptionist it’s the person you request informations (it’s a kind of guide); it provides all the info that



are necessary to orientate the users.

Book table of contents A table of contents is a list, usually found on a page before the start of a written work, of its



chapter or section titles or brief descriptions with their commencing page numbers.

Newspaper front page it’s a broshure who promote the content, it’s generally written with a promotional language.



Brochure

Usability is about all the features of the digital communication and digital problems.

The role of the Homepage

The homepage has multiple goals because the users also have multiple goals. Multiple people can use the same

page for multiple reasons. Inexperienced users often feel overwhelmed by homepages that don’t clearly help them

understand their options. All depends by the users, the goals and the contents.

The challenge is to designe a homepage that allows access to all important features. Focus and clarity are key, as is

an understanding of user’s goals.

Communicating the site’s purpose

The homepage communicate in one short glance:

where users are

 what your company/institution does

 what users can do at your site



Users must recognize the homepage immediately:

show the company name and/or logo in a resonable size and noticeable location

 include a tag line (a very short sentence, sometimes slogan), if necessary, that explicity summarize what

 the site or company does

Communicating information about your company

include a homepage link to an ‘’About Us” section (often at the end of the page)

 include “Contact Us” link on the homepage that goes to a page with all contact information for

 your company (primary address, phone number and email)

if your site gathers (raccoglie) any customer information, include a “Privacy Police” link on the home

 page

Navigation

The navigation area should also reveal the most important content/section of the site

Locate the primary navigation area in a highly noticeable place (adiacent to the main body of the page) – at

o the top of the page

Group items in the navigation area so that similar items are next to each other

o

Search

Users should be able to find “search” command easily and use it effortlessly.

o Make it visible, wide and keep it simple

o Don’t label the search area with a heading (use search button to the right of the box)

o

Graphics and animation

Graphics can greatly enhance (migliorare) a homepage, but can weigh down (appesantire) the design in visual clutter.

It’s important to use them carefully and edit them for the web. Don’t use many fonts – Don’t use many colors!

Animation rarely has a place on the homepage because it distracts from other elements (sliding galleries do

o not belong to this category). They are very frequent at the centre of web pages.

Never animate critical elements of the page, such as the logo, the tag line, or main heading. Animation catch the

o user’s attention but there are some riskes.

Let users choose whether they want to see an animated intro to your site – don’t make it the default!

o

Graphic design

Graphic design is not the starting point for the homepage design, but the final step:

Limit font styles and other text formatting

o Use high-contrast text and background colours

o Avoid horizontal scrolling

o

The most critical page elements should be visible in the first screen of content, without scrolling. Use a liquid layout so

the home page size adjusts to different screen resolutions.

Homepage design conventions

By the time a user arrives at your homepage for the first time, that user will already be carrying a large load of

 mental baggage.

And by this time, users have accumulated a generic mental model of the way homepages are supposed to

 work.

Essential recommendation / Strong recommendation / Default recommendation

This star rating indicates how critical the following guideline is to a satisfactory user experience.

(Vedi ultime slides della cartella “Usability”)

Lezione 11/04/24

Eyetracking

Eyetracking equipment tracks a user’s gaze as she uses an interface. This type of research is valuable for many

purposes (including evaluating visual design), but is particularly useful for studying what people do (and don’t) read

online. Most of the studies conducted contained both a quantitative and a qualitative portion:

In quantitive eyetracking studies, researchers aggregate viewing behavior across a large number of participants.

o The results include heatmaps and gaze metrics (for example, the average number of fixations on a particular

element of interest in the interface.)

In qualitative eyetracking studies, researchers analyze individual users’ viewing behaviors through gazeplots and

o gaze replays. In many cases, we asked participants to bring their own tasks (for work, school, or personal life) to

perform for this part of the session.

Eyetracking: Results

The upper left corner of a page (angolo in alto a sinistra) seems to be the preferred starting point for most

o online news users

The location of key elements – such as headlines and the flag – also seem to be powerful forces in determining

o reader attention

When viewing homepages, eyes initially tend to fixate in the upper left and finally move to the lower and upper right.

The sequence is fairly logical when considering that Westerners (occidentali) read from left to right. It also is consistent

(coerente) with traditional teachings of readers to scan printed pages in a Z-shaped or F-shaped pattern.

Another way to think about these sections is to break them into priority zones.

Remember: viewing patterns are affected by what page elements exists in particular locations.

Headline placement, images, and blurbs are strong factors in determining viewing patterns.

Homepage designs that contain the largest lead headlines closer to the centre of the page receive the most initial gazes

in that area.

F-Shaped Pattern

fast

F for

o That’s how users read your precious content

o In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that’s very

o different from what you learned in school

In the new eyetracking study, scholars recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages.

o They found that user’ main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks.

o This document reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

o Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element

o forms the F’s top bar.

Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically

o covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.

Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic

o scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier

heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

Obviously, users’ scan patterns are not always comprised of exactly three parts. Sometimes users will read across a

third part of the content, making the pattern look more like an E than an F.

Other times they will only read across once, making the pattern

look like an inverted L (with the crossbar at the top). Generally, however, reading

patterns roughly resemble an F, though the distance between the top and lower bar varies.

Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites

The above heatmaps show how users read three different types of Web pages:

o an article in the “about us” section of a corporate website (far left),

o a product page on an e-commerce site (center),

o a search engine results page (SERP; far right).

o If you look at and focus on the read (most-viewed) areas, all three heatmaps show the expected F patterm. Of

o course, there are some differences. The F viewing pattern is a rough, general shape rather than a

uniform, pixel-perfect behavior.

The F Pattern’s implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of the guidelines for writing for the Web

instead of repurposi