Week 2 Learning Journal

I found the most interesting aspect to user experience was that the design of a website or database is based around the fact that a searcher will not actively learn how to perform better searches. Instead they will just persevere with their method until they eventually find what they wanted (Edwards & Bruce 2006). This fact would mean that when creating databases the information should be organised in a way that is based on how people search. It seems that it is easy to create a database in a manner that seems logical at the time but is not conducive to how people actually search for information. Of course the greatest hurdle in overcoming this issue would be that not everyone is the same, therefore while a system could be perfectly designed for a large group of people it will not be as effective for everyone.

When it comes to creating my own database I think the best guide that I have found for creating a user friendly database would be Neilsen’s usability heuristics (Petrie & Bevan, 2009). This is because those guidelines ensure the database is designed around how people naturally search for information. When a database exceeds at Neilsen’s usability heuristics issues such as errors are not just dealt with in a way that is easily understandable to the average user; they insure that errors do not happen in the first place. While all guidelines that I found were clearly designed to create a user friendly system, the in-depth detail and strong focus on the user ensures that Neilsen’s usability heuristics is an excellent guide for creating a user friendly information system.


References:

Edwards, Sylvia L. & Bruce, Christine S. (2006) Panning for gold: understanding students information searching experiences. In Transforming IT Education: Promoting a culture of excellence. Informing Science Press, Santa Rosa, California

Petrie, H. & Bevan, N. (2009). The evaluation of accessibility, usability and user experience. In C. Stepanidis (ed). The Universal Access Handbook, CRC Press. Retrieved from: http://www.nigelbevan.com/papers/The_evaluation_of_accessibility_usability_and_user_experience.pdf