Case Study

ABS website usability testing

CLIENT:
Australian Bureau of Statistics

PROJECT BRIEF:
Conduct usability tests with a range of education professionals to validate assumptions made in the development of the new ABS education pages.

DESCRIPTION:
After engaging Red Pony's services to create a new education section for its website, the Australian Bureau of Statistics asked Red Pony to assist in conducting usability testing of the new design and content.

Red Pony consultant Peter Riches worked with ABS usability staff in Canberra to identify suitable education professionals to take part in the testing and design the set of tasks they would undertake.

The design of the tasks was crucial to validating assumptions made during the conceptualisation and specification development phases.

Users were asked to consider a number of scenarios that closely reflected 'real world' tasks they might commonly undertake. They were then asked to perform these tasks using the development version of the website in a controlled laboratory environment.

For the tests to produce useful and reliable information, it was essential that the tasks were easily understood without prejudicing the user as to how they might be accomplished using the website.

Following the testing, Red Pony was able to make evidence-based modifications to the layout and content of the final pages to improve the overall usability. The overall information architecture was remodelled and the structure of the classroom activity section was refined to better reflect user expectations.

As with any web development project, the usability testing was vital in bringing a new level of rigour to the design process and ensuring the final version of the website reflected the expectations and needs of the target audience.

"I look forward to working with Peter Riches again in the future and highly recommend Red Pony to any other organisation seeking professional technical communication services."
Paul Taylor, Director, Education Services, ABS

For more information, visit www.abs.gov.au/teachers and www.abs.gov.au/students.

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