Website Usability Assessment

1. Website Usability Assessment Conducted by Susan Schmidt For LBSC 690 March 6, 2012

2. Website evaluated: www.bankofamerica.com • Commercial website of Bank of America • Designed to attract new banking customers and provide online services for existing customers • Designed for both personal and business customers • A target user visiting this site would be looking for: Banking information for personal and business accounts (e.g., how to open an account, fees involved, services provided) Borrowing information for individuals and business (e.g., current rates, qualification, documentation required) Investment information Access to online banking services

3. Components of Usability assessment Three participants were each given three tasks to perform on the website: • What is the fee in Maryland for overdrawing a personal checking account? • Find the address of the nearest ATM that a blind person could use. • What is the current value of Bank of America shares?

4. Profile of Experimental Subjects Subject 1: Female, 22 years of age. College graduate working in the field of public health for a local government contractor Subject 2: Male, 54 years of age. College graduate working in the field of biotechnology (as a contractor in a government gene sequencing lab) Subect 3: Male, 25 years of age. College graduate working as a licensed Certified Public Account

5. User Experiences by Task Task 1: finding overdraft fee

6. Task 2: Finding accessible ATM

7. Task 3: Finding current stock price

8. Problems with the Bank of America Website Designand suggestions for improvement 1. Error occurred for users in searching for nearest accessible ATM from this point: The retrieval was not the nearest talking ATM, but a retrieval list based on search box at top of page (which searched on the default text of “enter keyword here.” Deactivating popup blocker resulted in same error. Careful heuristic design should incorporate error prevention so that users don’t experience such a frustrating result. Potential solution: eliminate this error in search based on address information for accessible ATMs. Somehow this search is not being recognized and default is going to empty search box.

9. 2. Users can make mistakes in a complex navigation and wind up in an incorrect area of the site and not know how to get back to an intermediate site (related to the user control and freedom heuristic). This is related to the retrieval error noted in (1) above and was the experience of Subject 2 in task 2 – he could not go back to his selection relative to accessibility and search for ATMs when he encountered an error after entering address . What should have been a list of accessible ATMs nearby looked like this: There was no obvious way of navigating from this point back to ATM search. Potential Solution: add an “emergency exit” to leave this unwanted state without having to go through entire dialogue again. Allow user to “undo” choice.

10. 3. Font colors and background are often muted, making navigation aids less noticeable and lists of options less readable; this was an issue for the older user who didn’t immediately see the search bar (though he did eventually find it and make use of it) and who had difficulty reading lists on certain pages. This relates to the aesthetics heuristic. Potential solution: Provide a background frame for the search box, making it “jump” from the page; use a less muted font color or value that is more easily readable, particularly by those with vision issues such as older users.

11. 4. Occasional problem with language used in navigation, with user expecting to immediately see information based on familiar language, not realizing that the terminology used in organizing the information varied from their expectation. For example, the task of finding overdraft fees was unsuccessful for a subject who did not realize that fees could be organized and presented relative to an account vs. to a service. This relates to the match between system and the real world heuristic. Potential Solution: Modify language used in navigation or provide up-front explanation of possibly confusing content. Provide this information immediately – not in a link. More information was actually available to explain service fees (“learn more’), but user already thought they understood list of options and didn’t think to look for further help.

12. Positive Aspects of Bank of America Website Design Availability of search engine. Subjects made use of this when navigation keys did not seem to provide obvious paths to information needed. This could be considered an example of user freedom and control, allowing the user to jump to information if meaning of primary or secondary navigation labels is ambiguous. Availability of site map. This is accessible on every page, and one user quickly made use of it after finding success with this mechanism on a previous task. Related to the recognition rather than recall heuristic. Expected functionality. User was able to find information using text word search via standard technique usable in many systems (control F). An example of consistency and standardsacross systems. Text of primary navigation bars (such as bank, borrow, invest on homepage) generally concise, clear, and familiar (subjects in general understood access to checking account information, for example). This relates to the match between system and the real world and aesthetics and minimalist design heuristics.