Fwd: auto webpage usability tester

Kitch,

thanks. nope, had not heard of.

--wendy



>http://www.maccentral.com/news/0004/21.usable.shtml
>
>UsableNet launches first Web Usability Preflight online
>by Dennis Sellers, dsellers@maccentral.com
>April 21, 2000, 7:00 am ET Monday, UsableNet will launch the first "Web 
>Usability Preflight" online to establish a Web Usability Index (WUI). The 
>new service, Lift Online, can purportedly be used by Web designers, Web 
>owners and Web masters to reduce the debugging time for development and 
>maintenance of sites, and to improve their usability. According to company 
>spokesperson, Jason Taylor, UsableNet aims to become the definitive source 
>for Web usability by offering services to the professional Web community 
>and becoming a gateway for the research community to improve the overall 
>ease of using the Web. Its technology will become available through online 
>services and subscription based tools and will be used to produce a month 
>"Web usability index" based on the knowledge it gains through the use of 
>it's service, he says. The launch of Lift Online -- allowed through an 
>on-line process -- means that any Web site owner or Web site professional 
>can "preflight" their Web page/site or a potential customer's site, and 
>receive a usability report. The report is a complete analysis based on 
>pre-selected preferences that define the type of user and purpose of the 
>site. The resulting report and suggested changes are based on proven 
>usability research guidelines and the pre-selected preferences. While 
>performing the online Web usability preflight, statistical information 
>will be compiled and used to form a Web usability index that will be made 
>available to press, research and other bodies to help assess the growth of 
>usability for the whole Web, he adds. "In terms of costs, the current 
>traditional method of manual Web site debugging is US $75 per hour, and 
>this averages the cost to analysis and fix one page at $18," says Taylor. 
>"Using Lift Online will reduce the analysis portion significantly and make 
>the fixing elements more organized reducing the cost per page to $10." The 
>core technology is able to evaluate usability features of a Web site, 
>including site navigability, download speed, graphic quality, 
>accessibility, searchability, etc. The server receives a group of source 
>documents for a Web site, analyzes them and applies a series of 
>pre-defined customizable usability rules. The usability rules may be 
>ranked or weighted according to the importance of the Web site feature 
>associated with the rule. As different flavors of Web sites have different 
>usability requirements, users may define new usability profiles and rules 
>and adjust weights to be applied to the rules. Then the user get a 
>usability rating of the Web site and recommends or implements fixes to the 
>source document which will increase its usability rating. Lift Online, as 
>the Web usability index, will be available Monday at http://usablenet.com. 
>It will be free in its current form, but a pro version will have a cost of 
>$1 a page, with a maximum of $50 per site. Click here for a list of today's

--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Wednesday, 26 April 2000 13:38:08 UTC