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Academic Computing Center > ACC News > Web Usability Lecture

Web Usability Lecture
June 4th 2003

Visiting Professor Dr. Albert N. Badre gives lecture on Web Usability
Article from News Highlights, by Caroline Hariz

On Wednesday, June 4th 2003, visiting professor at AUB's FEA, Dr Albert Nasib Badre, gave a stimulating lecture on "Usability for the Web: Interaction Design in Context," organised by the Academic Computing Center.

His lecture mainly revolved around two themes which constitute the most crucial elements of web design; designing for context and designing for the user experience. To illustrate the importance of these two points he drew upon a 'real life' example from the world of advertising.

Professor Albert Nassib Badre

A hugely successful billboard campaign in the US for laundry detergent was translated into Arabic and the same campaign was run in a Middle Eastern country. It was a huge flop. The reason? " Because the advertisers neglected the most important principles," explained Badre, "designing for the user characteristics, designing for the user experience, and designing for context." The ad that had been so successful in the US failed to capture the audience interest in the Middle East because the housewife in the picture 'looked too western,' the three sequential pictures were arranged from left to right, while Arabic-speaking audience scan from right to left. In addition, billboard ads were not that popular at the time in that particular country.

Professor Badre went on to explain about how to design for context and for the user experience, using a variety of slides to illustrate his points. He showed snapshots of different websites, including AUB's homepage, explaining how and why some met the 'usability' test and how others did not. He also pointed out that it should be clear to the user in the first 3 seconds what the website is offering, and that the most important links and subjects should be in the top one-third of the page.

Several times he reiterated the continuous need for evaluation and testing of prototypes, using focus groups composed of the target audience. He made good use of his audience, asking them to complete a short test paper which needed things to be arranged in a logical sequence. There were no right or wrong answers. After a quick show of hands he demonstrated how everyone thinks differently, and that if we design for ourselves, there will still be 75% of the population that think differently, hence the need for constant evaluation and review.

At the end of the lecture, Professor Badre answered several questions raised by the audience.

About the Presenter:

Dr. Albert Nasib Badre is a leading contributor to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). He has been a Professor of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology for thirty years, the last twenty-five of which have been in HCI and Usability. He is the founder of the Georgia Tech premier graduate degree program in Human Computer Interaction. He is also a principal and founder of Interfacile, Inc., a usability-consulting firm. Dr. Badre is the author of numerous technical papers in human computer interaction, user interface design, and usability engineering. He is a co-editor of the book Directions in Human/Computer Interaction, and is the author of a recent book: Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context.

Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context by Albert N. Badre