Steve Ammidown

Author's details

Name: Steve Ammidown
Date registered: August 24, 2012

Biography

Steve is a Usability and User Experience intern with GSA's First Fridays program. He is a student at the University of Maryland, College Park iSchool, with a focus on Archives, Records and Information Management.

Latest posts

  1. Three Easy Steps to Usability Rock Stardom — November 28, 2012
  2. NOAA Enhances User Experience with Testing — October 11, 2012
  3. Usability Testing and the Paperwork Reduction Act — September 17, 2012

Author's posts listings

Nov
28

Three Easy Steps to Usability Rock Stardom

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Following basic usability principles and techniques is a best practice in managing your agency's website.

How do you let people know that your office website stinks? Or how do you get them to care? Let’s say you’ve been at your agency a year or so. You’ve mastered the office layout, and you can comfortably engage in the argument over the best falafel place. Now let’s say when you open your agency’s website, there’s a …

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Oct
11

NOAA Enhances User Experience with Testing

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Weather.gov After 3

Government websites often serve two or more distinct audiences. They have to offer technical content for specialists and easier-to-understand content for the general public. Our experience shows that specialists may crave data in raw form, but the public often needs interpretation to understand what they’re seeing. Usability testing is a powerful tool to make sure …

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Sep
17

Usability Testing and the Paperwork Reduction Act

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Drowning in paperwork? The Paperwork reduction Act will help with that. Photo via Creative Commons and Anya Quinn.

When you’re doing usability testing for government websites, having more than nine participants can create a problem.  Specifically, you will have to be in compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). But don’t worry! It’s not as complicated as you think. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), seeing a need to streamline the PRA …

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