Serendipity35

I was working on updates for the graduate visual design course I teach at NJIT last night. As I was looking at some files on web usability, I was struck with an unexpected similarity. Here's the traditional process of creating a web site from a usability perspective: plan, analyze, design, test and refine.

Staring at that in a recursive cycle on the screen, it hit me. It's instructional design. Okay, no great revelation there, but do most educators or curriculum designers ever take into account some of the concerns of a usability specialist when they design lessons or a course?

Accessibility is a part of usability that some designers address and I actually heard this week at a virtual worlds workshop some concern for Section 508 compliance in using Second Life. (Hurrah for schools paying attention prior to a lawsuit!) The Usability First website has a good glossary of usability terms, and is good example of usability itself.

Usability really addresses the relationship between tools and their users and the effectiveness of a tool (LMS, course site, software, assignment, rubric...) means it must allow users to accomplish their tasks in the best way possible. What makes a website or piece of software usable? Let me take some basic topics and questions of usability and apply them to course (re)design.

• How well does the functionality fit student/user needs? (Students have needs that the course should address? Wow.)
• Does the tool fit the student's expectations? (Did you bother to find out in planning what are their expectations?)
• How will the course be tested before it is used for credit? (Test he course before the semester? Radical idea.)
• Is the content easy to learn? (It's not asking if the content is difficult, but rather if it is easy to learn - not the same thing.)
  
• How memorable is the content? (As in that really funny TV commercial you love but can't tell me what product it is selling.)
• Is the software "error tolerant?" (What about the assessment and the instructor?)

The Web Communications Division (for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs) works with many federal agencies, and offers a really good online guide for developing usable sites.

The Usability.gov site is actually a nice example of a clean, intuitive, visually appealing design for distributing information - not unlike a course site. It has planning tools, lots of templates, examples and guidelines. I can see education applications from amny features. Planning to survey students using an online survey in your LMS or using something like Survey Monkey? You might want to check out one of their samples like this EPA Site Questionnaire. The overall format of the site is the step-by-step plan, analyze, design, test and refine that I mentioned in my opening. Since it's a .gov site, that means the materials are there for you to use, as I do in my course.