Usability study for the relaunch of the VHB website

In September 2007, Sunbeam was engaged for the relaunch of the website of the Virtual University of Bavaria (VHB). The new website needed to have greater clarity, better structure, fewer menus, a simpler design and greater ease of use in order to meet the needs of the client and its students.  Usability testing was to be used to determine whether the new design did in fact meet these requirements.

The tests were intended to answer the following questions:

• How is the site is perceived and processed?
• What elements catch the user's eye?
• What do users see, and what do they not see?

Our design involved placing the navigation panel on the right-hand rather than the left-hand side, contrary to what is customary on other websites.  Because people in this part of the world read from the top left hand corner, this design was meant to help the reader quickly register the contents. Ease of use was meant to be improved by placing the navigation on the right hand side, where it can be reached more easily with the mouse, which is usually on the right hand side as well. .  .at least in theory. The usability test was used to test this approach.

Thus, we hoped to be able to answer the question of how a right-mounted navigation panel is perceived. An A/B test was used to obtain the answer. Two groups of volunteers each received one prototype of the website, one with a right-mounted navigation panel and the other with the navigation panel on the left. The volunteers had to perform various tasks while their gaze patterns were measured using eye tracking and subsequently analyzed. The following questions were put to the test:

• Which navigation panel achieved better results in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction?
• Which navigation is processed more optimally?
• What effect does placement of the navigation panel have on the way the content is processed?

The conclusion of the tests was that there is no reason to abandon the right-mounted navigation, since it serves as a smoother, more even visual guide and lays the groundwork for more efficient and effective orientation.

The right-mounted navigational panel even did better than its counterpart on the subjective portion of the test, i.e. in the opinion of the student volunteers.  Numerous participants agreed that this arrangement allows the reader to focus more easily on the content. 

The eye-tracking gaze data showed a very balanced view for both versions. This was true throughout the entire group of participants, with few differences observed between the two versions. The visual path from the right-mounted navigation panel appeared to be slightly longer depending on the resolution.

The images shown here give a clear representation of how a user scans the page in search of information. The longer the user's gaze remains in one location, the larger the size of the circle at that location. The Scanpath images show which elements catch the user's attention and where users expect to find information. The vhb usability study shows that key items like the course catalog successfully grab the visitor's attention