Tests of Usability Guidelines About Response to User Actions. Importance, Compliance, and Application of the Guidelines

Abstract

Usability is a quality that a web page can have due to its simple use. Many recommendations aim to improve the web user experience, but there is no standardization of them. This study is part of a saga, which aims to order existing recommendations and guidelines by analyzing the behavior of 20 Information Technology (IT) developers. This publication analyzes the set of guidelines that determine "user responses" when they interact with a website. It is intended to group these guidelines and obtain data on the application of each of them. The test is carried out with 20 web developers without training or experience in web usability. The objective is to know if there are "user response" guidelines that a developer with no training or usability experience applies innate. Since web developers are also users, it is believed that there may be innate behavior that is not necessarily learned. The purposes of the work are: 1) Enumerate the most forgotten recommendations by web developers. This can help to think about the importance of offering specific training in this field. 2) Know the most important recommendations and guidelines, according to the web developers themselves. The investigation is carried out as follows: First, IT engineers were asked to develop a website; Second, user tests were performed and the most neglected and most applied guidelines were evaluated. The level of compliance was also analyzed, as developers lack experience in web usability and could be applying a guideline, but not correctly; Third, web developers are interviewed to find out what guidelines they consider necessary. The results are intended to help us understand if a web developer without training or experience in web usability can innately apply guidelines on "user responses". The objective of the study is to determine that there are guidelines that are applied intuitively and others that are not, and to know the reason for each situation. The results determine that the guidelines considered essential and those that are most applied innately have something in common. The results reveal that the essential guidelines and those that are most commonly implemented inherently share certain commonalities.