Web Manager University – Spring 2009
Class Title: Designing and Writing Forms for the Web
| Class Format: | One-Day Course | |
| Instructor: | Kathryn Summers, PhD, University of Baltimore | |
| Date | Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | |
| Time: | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | |
| Place: | Department of Labor (DOL) |
Directions to DOL |
| Fee: | $200 federal, state, or local U.S. government; $300 for non-government |
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Register for this course (registration form hosted by a third–party vendor)
Course Description
This session will focus on designing registration forms and other interactive tools for a broad consumer audience that includes the 50 percent of U.S. adults who read at the 8th grade level or below. These recommendations are particularly important for medical information or information on government services. The session will include:
- Navigational strategies and reading behaviors of users with lower literacy skills, including hands-on analysis of data from eyetracking sessions
- Ways to respond to these behaviors, including a brief demonstration of key interaction design recommendations developed through iterative research and prototyping
- Strategies for helping users interact with online forms and understand the results of their actions while using forms
- Key interactions such as registration or enrollment forms
- How to balance the needs of low–and high–literacy users
What You'll Learn
Learn how to design usable online forms for all users, including the 50 percent of U.S. adults who read at the 8th grade level or below.
What You'll Learn
How to design online forms that will be easy for a broad consumer audience to understand and use.
Who Should Attend
Web managers, web content providers, and usability specialists
Level of Course
Beginner, intermediate, and advanced
Course/Seminar Format
Presentation, discussion, and hands-on exercises
About the Instructor
Kathryn Summers, PhD, co–author of Creating Websites That Work
Dr. Summers teaches human/computer interaction, user research, usability testing, and information architecture for the University of Baltimore, where she is the program director for the master's and doctoral programs in Interaction Design and Information Architecture. She also directs the School of Information Arts and Technologies' User Research Lab.
Dr. Summers has done extensive research about navigation, on-line reading comprehension, and information design. Her current research focuses on making information and online interactions easier for people with lower literacy skills. She uses eyetracking, careful observation, iterative prototyping, and contextual interviews to study how users with lower literacy skills find, navigate, read information, and fill out forms on the Web. Results of this research have been presented at a variety of international conferences and published in academic and industry journals. She also participated in a three-year grant from NSF working with children ages 10–13 to design interfaces for the University of Maryland 's International Children's Digital Library.
Dr. Summers's consulting work integrates the theoretical and the concrete through usability testing and usability design reviews. Her clients have included REUTERS, Pfizer, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, TreasuryDirect.gov, and MCI.
Return to the Spring 2009 Schedule of Classes
Page Updated or Reviewed: January 7, 2009
