Usability: User Characteristics
Designers should pay particular attention to user’s expectations of how a Web site is organized and how they can use it... Understanding user’s mental models requires specifying how users represent both structural and functional knowledge about their environment... [The cognitive space is] …composed of individual thought processes, impressions, perspectives, plans, goals, and concerns that are specific to that individual. - Albert Badre (2002) in Shaping Web Usability.
The designer must understand the user’s Web ecology. In other words, how does the individual act in the online environment? To understand this ecology, you must understand the audience characteristics and the implications of these characteristics.
Address the individual differences among potential users:
- Background knowledge and experience
- Personality and temperment
- Demographics: gender, age, geographic area, socioeconomic background
- Technology skills: computer skills, experience
Address cognitive processing capabilities and limits:
- Selective attention: draw attention to screen locations and help users find displayed items
- Short-term memory: limited chunks of information (6-8 ideas at a time)
- Long-term memory: consider user’s mental representations of the Web and their previous interaction
Consider special audiences such as characteristics of older users:
- Movement control: need more time to complete the same action, limited fine motor skill, less ability to maintain continual movements
- Perception: color, contrast, acuity, hearing
- Cognitive: limited attention and memory
Generate an audience profile:
- Characteristics. What are the most relevant characteristics?
- Characteristics Range. What's the range and frequency of the relevant characteristics?
- Implications. How does this information affects design decisions?