Home page usability study final report for April 2005 study
Well after some delay the usability study that we used to guide some of our changes to the home page in May is now available in PDF format along with the executive summary is available in HTML (most will likely just want to read that anyway).
The study did not have as many participants as we would have liked and nor did it look at the external audiences. But it did offer up some guidance on changes to the home page and how they effected peoples work flow.
Take a look at the report and let me know what you think. We are working on another study that will look at both external and internal audiences in the fall. The goal is to make this a regular exercise and maybe even expand it. “Test early, test often” is echoed in the usability world… 
But I also believe that usability has more to do with accessibility than even the WAI guidelines. Why? Well what good is a technically accessible web site if no one can use it? I wouldn’t suggest the WAI is not useful, just that I think usability is an extremely important piece of the puzzle.
On that note, Derek Featherstone will be at UW next Friday talking about Accessibility. Take a moment to sign-up, it is open to all members of the UW community.