SharePoint Application Design and Usability Assessment

Allin's SharePoint Application Design and Usability Assessment has the following objectives:

• What is the purpose of the sites/portal?
• What is the benefit of the site/portal to the client’s business?
• Please describe your organization in a few sentences
• What is organization’s sector?
• Please describe your customers/users
• Customer demographics
• User Roles

During the assessment Allin resources will work with the client teams to address and review the following topics and subject areas:

1. Technical Expectations
1. Browser Compatibility
1. Displays on popular versions of Internet Explorer (7+)
2. Displays on popular versions of Firefox (3+)
3. Displays on popular versions of Opera (9+)
2. Home Page Download Time (< 10 seconds?)
3. Functionality
1. All internal hyperlinks work
2. All external hyperlinks work
3. All forms function as expected
4. No JavaScript errors are generated
2. Page Elements
1. Site ID is clearly established and exists as a navigation element
3. Page Name
1. Visually, the name of a page should appear to be framing the content unique to that page
4. Current Location
1. Show the user where they are in relation to everything else
5. Tagline / Site Description
6. Clear Visual Page Hierarchy
1. Constructed pages use clear headings to organize content, and subheadings to make that content easier to parse.
7. Page Layout
1. Appealing to target audience
2. Good use of basic design principles:
1. Repetition
2. Contrast
3. Proximity
4. Alignment
3. Displays without horizontal scrolling at 1024x768 and higher resolutions
4. Balance of text/graphics/white space on page
5. Good contrast between text and background
6. Repetitive information (header/logo and navigation) takes up no more than one-quarter to one-third of the top portion of the browser window at 1024x768 resolution
7. Home page has compelling, interesting information above the fold (before scrolling down) at 1024x768
8. Multimedia
1. Each audio/video/Flash file used serves a clear purpose
2. The audio/video/Flash files used enhance rather than distract from the site
3. Captions are provided for each audio or video file used (accessibility)
4. Download times for audio or video files are indicated
5. Links to downloads for media plug-ins are provided
9. Color and Graphics
1. Use of different colors in page backgrounds and text is limited to a maximum of 3 - 4  colors plus neutrals
2. Color is used consistently
3. Color has good contrast with associated text
4. Color is not used alone to convey meaning (accessibility)
5. Use of color and graphics enhances rather than distracts from the site
6. Graphics are optimized and do not significantly slow download
7. Each graphic used serves a clear purpose
8. Image tags use the alt attribute to configure alternate text to display if the browser or user agent does not support images (accessibility)
9. Animated images do not distract from the site and either do not repeat or only repeat a few times
10. Navigation
1. Primary Navigation: explains to the user what the main sections of the site are, and helps them get to those sections
2. Secondary Navigation: Planning out the structure of your sites navigation so that viewers will have some idea of how to get around your site
3. Utilities: parts of your site that aren’t connected to the primary sections of your site.
1. More important links in a place where youre viewers will easily find them
2. Don’t make your navigation too crowded by including lots of utility navigation links
4. Main navigation links are clearly and consistently labeled
5. Navigation is easy to use for target audience
6. If an image, Flash, or DHTML is the main navigation, clear text links are in the footer section of the page (accessibility)
7. Navigation is structured in an unordered list (when possible for accessibility)
8. Navigation aids are used when necessary (accessibility)
1. Site map
2. Breadcrumbs
9. All navigation hyperlinks "work" — are not broken