Designing for Usability

Posted: Jul 06 in Usability tagged Usability best practices by Ines

For medical web sites, usability is one of the most important aspects of the design process. Medical web sites often give patients the first impression of how the doctor runs his or her practice. If the user experience is pleasant, the visitor is likely to trust the physician. If they leave the site with a poor experience, they lose trust. Unlike an e-commerce site where the visitor may let some things slide, medical websites have no such leeway. The moment a potential patient loses trust or has a negative experience, they’ll look elsewhere for care.

Usability Guidelines
Jakob Nielsen, one of the leading experts in site usability, explains three steps to test the experience a user has on a website to help make sure that the site is designed to give that user the best possible experience.

• Find some representative users. Make sure they’re willing to test the website for you and give you honest feedback.
• Have them perform tasks that your users will perform. If you’ve included scheduling or contact forms, make sure these are tested.
• Observe. Don’t just go by what your testers say; instead, make sure you see what they have difficulty with or what works well for them so you can get feedback in addition to what they actually share with you.

Of course, it’s important to apply what you learn to your website design. Take anything you learn from having this focus group actually use your website and modify it accordingly.