Usability Resources

Government Usability Resources

Your guide to customer-friendly website and interface design

What's Usability?

Usability is the measure of the quality of a customer's experience when using a product or system, whether a website, a software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.

Usability.gov and  Webcontent.gov

Use these resources to ensure your website is usable, useful, and accessible. Maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the General Services Administration (GSA).

Web Manager University

Attend affordable training in web design and usability best practices to improve the usability of your government websites and web applications. These webinars and courses are open to government and nongovernment employees. Sponsored by GSA.

Government Web Design and Usability Guidelines, 2nd Edition

Use these research-based usability and web design guidelines to make design decisions based on the current and best available evidence. Developed by the Health and Human Services with GSA support. Available from the Government Printing Office for $25 per copy.

Common Industry Standard for Usability Requirements (CISU-R)

Use this new standard to help define usability requirements for your web and interface design and development projects; it can be used for in-house or contracted projects. The standard provides detailed specifications for context of use; usability methods; and test measures. Developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (The requirements document is at the bottom of the page.)

Usability, Design, and Accessibility Task Group

Join this interagency task group of the Federal Web Managers Council to network with other usability and web design staff and collaborate in developing usability resources.  Open to government employees (federal, state, local, and tribal) only.

U-Group Listserv
Join the U-Group announcement listserv to receive information about usability-related topics. Government and non-government employees may join the U-Group listserv.

• To join, send an email (with no subject) to listserv@listserv.gsa.gov and type in the body of the message:  subscribe u-group
• To unsubscribe, send an email (with no subject) to listserv@listserv.gsa.gov and type in the body of the message:  signoff u-group

Web Content Managers Listserv

Join this listserv to exchange ideas and information with other government web managers and usability specialists. Open to government employees (federal, state, local, and tribal) only.

Usability Testing Software (UTE) 

Use this usability testing software to collect, analyze, and report the results of web-based usability tests. The Usability Testing Environment (UTE) Tool, Release 2, is available free to U.S. federal government agencies.  (You must be a federal employee to access this software for free. See the fact sheet for further information.)

The UTE Tool is available in English and Spanish.

The shortcut to this page is www.gsa.gov/usability.