Comments on: USEFul – A Framework To Automate Website Usability Evaluation (Part 1)

By: An Introduction To Website Usability Testing | Usability GeekUsability Geek

An Introduction To Website Usability Testing | Usability GeekUsability Geek — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:20:49 +0000

[...] Automated Usability Evaluation: Probably the Holy Grail of usability testing. Various academic papers and prototypes have been developed in order to try and automate website usability testing, all with various degrees of success. One interesting approach has been discussed in this blog is Justin Mifsud’s USEFul Framework. You can read about it in the article “USEFul: A Framework to Automate Website Usability Evaluation” [...]

By: Customerexplabs

Customerexplabs — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:15:00 +0000

automating a usability evaluation is an interesting idea, but i’m not too convinced it will provide significant value. Similar to the problem with “heuristic evaluations” – they become very very generic and superficial guidelines that won’t necessarily lead you to an improved website. With website usability in particular, business objectives are key in creating and understanding and evaluating the objectives. The best user experience is the balance of a user experience that users likes while also helping to meet its business objectives.

By: ben halvorson

ben halvorson — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:14:00 +0000

would you see the website to the internet thanks, ben halvorson

By: Justin Mifsud

Justin Mifsud — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:36:36 +0000

Hi Bennet

With regards to the list of guidelines, they are mostly taken from Usability.gov list. However, the framework is flexible enough to accept any set of guidelines that you want to use.

As for the flagging of buttons, I presume you are referring to the screenshot. In fact, as you can see in the same screenshot, this flagging is appearing under “Possible Violations”, meaning that the framework detected that violation but it is up to the user to decide it is a violation or not. Thus, if the person using USEFul feels that for that particular website a “Go” button is usable, then they can ignore the warning.

By: Bennett McElwee

Bennett McElwee — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:03:43 +0000

I would love to see a list of the guidelines that it checks.

(Does it really flag all buttons that aren’t labelled with Update, Go, Submit, Cancel, Enter, Home, Next or Previous? That seems… harsh.)

By: Justin Mifsud

Justin Mifsud — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:59:54 +0000

Hi Chandra

As I wrote in my article, USEFul is a prototype so it is not readily available for the public. However, there may be plans to develop it for commercial use, provided that I get appropriate funding

By: Harpreet Chadha

Harpreet Chadha — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:35:20 +0000

Hi Justin,

Is this ready to use, i mean what is there the URL to start using it?