Website Usability Report: Renaldo Grayson’s EDID6508 Portfolio Website
URL: https://edid6508grayson.weebly.com/
Executive Summary
EDID6508 requires each student to select another student’s portfolio website to review for its usability. The members of Collaborative Group 3 have decided that each will select another member’s website, making sure that each one has a reviewer. The website should be user-friendly and should be able to load and display images with no difficulty. Usability is described to feature the following characteristics: accessibility, responsiveness, user-friendliness in layout and navigation, and helpful, grammatically-correct content (University of South Florida, 2018). If there is a desire to promote the website to more viewers, search engine optimization is also applied.
Introduction
On the homepage of Renaldo Grayson’s website, he greets everyone with a “Welcome to My Website” as there is no title on the page. On the upper left corner, the menus are displayed. Because of the minimalistic design, only “Home” and “About Me” are shown. The rest can be accessed through “More…” Clicking “More” displays the various projects that Renaldo has uploaded into his portfolio website. Each link has a unique name that explicitly states what the project is.
Test objectives
The test was carried out to evaluate the following:
- Content & Layout
- Navigation
- Links (content)
- Background and Color Choices
- Fonts
- Graphics & Images (accessibility)
- Copyright
- Spelling and Grammar
Content & Layout
The content and layout chosen by Renaldo is minimalistic. There is a clean design that focuses highly on the texts per page. The layout is clean, which makes it ideal for displaying content. The layout is consistent and triggers an expectation of what layout will be seen on the next click.
Navigation
Again, because of the minimalistic design, there are only a few corners that one can focus on. The black Helvetica (or font similar to Helvetica) texts are plain and bare. When you drag your mouse over a clickable text, it becomes underlined in green.
Links (content)
The content is to the point, which is consistent to the minimalism of the design. Renaldo makes use of Scribd to present longer texts. Links all lead or at least lead to pages with headings, as preparations to the content that will later be posted.
Background and Color Choices
The white background and black paragraph texts work well with the surprisingly bright headings. I believe that it is earned because colors are used at the bare minimum. However, perhaps more consistency in the use of the Black and Green, regular and roll-over colors for the headings would have slightly improved the presentation.
Fonts
The font used made it easy to read the content. There is no issue of eye strain, at all.
Graphics & Images (accessibility)
The videos and graphics, as well as embedded Scribd documents, readily load when a page is visited.
Copyright
Images, videos, and documents have been properly cited.
Spelling and Grammar
Spelling and grammar have been checked.
Method
Collaborative Group 3 decided together which member should review whose website. The group collectively assigned Renaldo’s website as my target website for the usability review.
Findings
Renaldo’s website has a consistent design, which reflects a plan. However, there may be a few tweaks that could secure that consistency. However, the homepage should at least reflect a title and a clearer idea as to what is going to be featured in the other pages. The practice HTML in the homepage, on the good side, does provide people a look at his learning journey. The navigation is clear and easy to follow, but the homepage may make the user think twice.
Appendix
Table 1
Usability Evaluation (Table adapted from Instructor’s Rubric)
Category |
Maximum Score |
Reviewer’s Score |
Content & Layout |
4 |
3 |
Navigation |
4 |
3 |
Links (content) |
4 |
3 |
Background and Color Choices |
4 |
3 |
Fonts |
4 |
3 |
Graphics & Images (accessibility) |
4 |
3 |
Copyright |
4 |
4 |
Spelling and Grammar |
4 |
4 |
Total |
32 |
26 |
Works Cited
University of South Florida. (2018, March 13). What Is Website Usability & Why Is It Important? Retrieved from Health is Technology Blog: http://health.usf.edu/is/blog/2018/03/13/what-is-website-usability--why-is-it-important
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