Week 2 Blog: Usability
Posted by: barbarabrownebis4 on: March 12, 2009
This week’s blog requirements are to find websites which contain some or all of the five E’s of usability. When we were assigned this task last week there was a huge sense of reluctance at the thought of finding websites which contain some or all of the five E’s of usability. We all assumed it would be impossible to think of and find sites that were badly designed. It didn’t take me long to see that this wasn’t the case. On a regular basis we are all victims of these badly designed websites some however are more obvious than others.
The 5 E’s of usability consist of the following
- Effectiveness of the website,
- Efficiency of the website,
- does the website Engage with the end user,
- Is the website Error Tolerant and
- Is it easy to learn and understand from the website.
1) The first website which I think is rather badly designed is http://www.bankofireland.ie/ .One would think that because this is one of Irelands main banking companies that they would have a top notch website for their customers. Instead we see a bland plain website which does not ENGAGE very well with the end user. We can see that the Apply Online buttons are not very well aligned and the welcoming font appears like this ‘Welcome to Bank of Ireland Republic of Ireland’. It uses two different colours and no punctuation. When a customer logs in, there are a number of steps that need to be completed and a number of different pages that have to be opened before the target page has been reached to check their bank account details. This portrays INEFFICIENCIES and is highly INEFFECTIVE as the customer will just lose attention and won’t be bothered to go through each step. I don’t think that this website has been designed to the best way that it could have been. It isn’t a very interesting website and certainly wouldn’t hold my attention.
2) Another website which is inefficient and dazzling to say the least is the Radio Kerry Website- http://www.radiokerry.ie/ . For starters the colour of their background is enough to dazzle a hare and I don’t think people would stay on this site long if they visited it especially if they suffer from migraines. Not alone is the background colour very off putting but also the pictures on top of the page of people popping up and down is also quite annoying! The Radio Kerry logo on the top left hand corner containing the green writing is practically illegible and this website certainly would be of no use to anybody suffering from colour blindness. Their navigation bar is squashed and the font on the page in general is rather small. This website is just not very well laid out and the design could be a whole lot better. It would definitely not be EASY TO LEARN from this website.
3) My final website which I found to be badly designed is http://cheltenham-2009.com/cheltenham/ . For the week that’s in it this website will have many visitors. I googled Cheltenham and tis is what the search returned to me! Once again I have many of the same complaints as I had with the Radio Kerry one especially with the colour! Seriously can these so called ‘Web Designers’ not see or something? It is hideous. I can assure you that many people would log on to this website in particular this week and they would expect top see more than what they get. Perhaps a navigation bar containing betting tips and maybe more information on the week itself instead of jus a little video screen with four options. Also the overall header hasn’t even been given a name instead we see ‘Untitled’ on display for the tab. This website is very INEFFICIENT and INEFFECTIVE to say the least. It doesn’t interact or engage with the end user at all. You also have to scroll across instead of down to see the entire page. And if you were looking up this website hoping to find out some information you certainly wouldn’t learn anything. When you click on the four links you are just redirected to the paddypower.com website so basically this website has no use at all! Also this website is not ERROR TOLERANT in the slightest. I have been waiting now for five minutes for the screen to display the live races. I definitely wouldn’t want to be in a hurry to watch a race and worse again I wouldn’t want to have had any money on a horse in the particular race that I am still waiting to watch!! I have broadband so people without it who would have much slower download speeds will encounter great difficulty with this website…causing each of the five E’s of usability to occur!
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