Creating usable simplicity in a text-based "quick help" website

ABSTRACT

In autumn 1999, the Indiana University School of Education Technology Services spawned a plan to change its Web site from a promotional site to a help site. The intent was to offer technology assistance and information as well as provide ETS with a centralized knowledge base. Since ETS is responsible for network services, distance education, computer workstations, and telephone services, the task was onerous.We began the endeavor hoping to decrease users' reliance on our help desk call-in center. Believing the computing support adage that 90% of questions are repetitions of the same ten, we designed the project around that concept.A study of user needs was the first step. We recruited a group of graduate students in Instructional Systems Technology program to test our original Web site's usability. Although we knew we would not retain the same format, we wanted to use the study to assess our users' needs. The students analyzed two years of ETS trouble tracking records, and produced the "top ten" questions. Then they devised questions for users regarding how well they could find answers on the existing site. While the researchers led users through a set of specified tasks, they recorded valuable user comments. Then, from the data and comments, we set out to create the revised site.We discovered the "top ten" questions spawned many subset issues. In addition, as a convenience to users, we wanted to include information they hadn't asked for. Hence, the task became one of developing hundreds of pages. Thus, design strategy became an issue. To remedy this, a colleague provided us with a simple Perl script that could be inserted as a "boiler plate" in each document. Each change always creates more issues; we then had to find a local search engine that worked well with our documents. The site is always evolving, but the current version is at: http://education.indiana.edu/~ets.

REFERENCES

• 1: Nielsen, Jacob. Designing Web Usability.
• 2: Web Pages That Suck. http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com.
• 3: Martha C. Sammons, The Internet Writer's Handbook, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999
• 4: Indiana University Education Technology Services. http://indiana.edu/~ets.
• 5: Designing More Useable Web Sites. http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/.

INDEX TERMS

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
information technology, redesign, usability, web site