Web Manager University - Spring 2008
Class Title: Advanced Usability Testing
| Instructor: | Cari Wolfson, Focus on U! | |
| Date: | June 3–4, 2008 (Tuesday & Wednesday) | |
| Time: | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | |
| Place: | Bureau of Labor Statistics |
Directions to BLS |
| Fee: | $400 for federal, state, or local U.S. government employees; $600 for non-government participants. |
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Course Description
Building on the Usability Bootcamp course from the Fall 2007 semester, this intensive, hands-on course will extend your knowledge and arm you with the tools necessary to design a user–friendly, citizen–centric website. You'll learn why the best websites are designed around users' critical tasks and how to use the latest research–based best practices to improve the usefulness and usability of your website.
Explore a wide-range of iterative usability and design techniques to develop a data-driven website that performs measurably better.
Learn about proven user-centered design methods, including how to:
- Use customer research to analyze and prioritize users
- Develop personas and analyze user tasks
- Develop an intuitive information architecture and navigation system
- Design an attractive, credible site that satisfies users
- Ensure users are successfully able to find information
- Build a website that successfully meets user needs
You'll participate in hands-on exercises such as:
- Card sorting
- Parallel design
- Wire-framing
- Usability testing And more...
Get the latest tools, templates, and resources you need to build and improve your existing web presence, including examples, exercises, and discussions of real-life design projects from a vast array of government websites. Other topics that will be covered are field studies, in-person and remote testing, and A/B testing.
Who Should Attend
Attendees must have a basic understanding of usability principles and testing. It is requested that you have attended one prior basic level course offered by Web Manager University: Usability Testing That Gets Results (Fall 2006, Spring 2007) Introduction to Usability (Spring 2006), Introduction to Usability and Accessibillity (Fall 2006) or Usability Bootcamp (Fall 2007). If you have not attended one of the prior basic level courses, it is requested that you have commensurate training or on–the–job usability experience.
Cari Wolfson, president of Focus on U!, specializes in analyzing, designing, and iteratively testing websites to create products that are measurably easier to use, learn, and understand. Focus on U! provides a comprehensive range of services to clients including user and task analysis, user research (including interviews, online surveys, and contextual inquiries), usability testing, information architecture, expert/heuristic reviews, on-site user-centered design training, and many others. Clients include The United States Mint, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of State, the Department of Treasury, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Reserve Bank, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and many others.
Prior to founding Focus on U!, Cari was a senior usability engineer with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this role, she helped develop HHS's Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines book, www.usability.gov and the U-Group newsletter. She also has authored various user-centered design articles, including a two-part series for IBM's Ease of Use newsletter. Cari also served as the lead information architect with a large Internet consulting firm based in Herndon , VA, where her clients included AT&T Wireless, Dr. Atkins, M&M Mars, and Human Rights Watch.
Return to the Spring 2008 Schedule of Classes
Page Updated or Reviewed: May 30, 2008
