Comments on: Web usability key for online marketing success even in eLearning

By: Mary your distance learning colleges guide

Mary your distance learning colleges guide — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:19 +0000

Tom, Thanks for sharing these web usability insights. I was interning at a college that’s looking to acquire BB for their learning management solutions. Will forward your post to them so they can make an informed decision before they plunge and regret.

By: Li, Chunshen (Don)

Li, Chunshen (Don) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:01:01 +0000

I believe Tom Markiewicz’s main theme on this particular blog is about the importance of Usability, which I share. And I would think speed is also extremely important, again allow me to use the particular little web app I developed lately as a case, it was slow, frankly quite slow, my suspicion was on three possibilities, my box’s security? my code is not optimized? db not well designed? And I knew I’m strong in the last two, so, I tackled the first suspect first, well, didn’t find anything wrong, then I reexamined the other two, and late this afternoon I found the culprit, a humongous db log file laying around (it wasn’t obvious). Man, now you know what lighting speed means. Sorry I’m getting off the topic.

By: Tom Markiewicz

Tom Markiewicz — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:48:46 +0000

@VT Student - First, I don’t see a correlation between speaking English and BlackBoard’s usability. The fact that they are not complaining does not imply that the software is usable or even that they like it. It only proves that they either don’t care or don’t feel like complaining publicly.

You’re entitled to your opinion, but I’ll ask one question. Presumably, from the name left on the comment form, you’re a student. If so, have you actually used the instructor interface for BlackBoard? Have you actually tried to set up a course, add grades, add documents, and otherwise manage a course throughout a semester. This is what I’m discussing and maybe I should have been more clear in mentioning my specific perspective though I felt it was implied in the post.

You may have a different point of view as a student using the system, but from the instructor perspective BlackBoard is very hard to use compared to other applications and what is available today.

I’ve mentioned these issues with BlackBoard in every class and I’ve yet to have any student say positive things regarding the app.

Finally, the post was not necessarily meant to attack BlackBoard, but to use it as an example of how important web usability is in designing web applications. Additionally, I wanted to emphasize how some companies have little incentive to improve their products which can ultimately lead to problems.

Anyone else think I’m being overly harsh? Let me know!

By: VT Student

VT Student — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:19:41 +0000

I think it’s interesting to note that my professors who can barley speak English don’t complain much about blackboard.
In fact, a lot of them love it, most of their VT blackboard pages are all decked out and are 10 times better than my ‘tech savvy’ professors.

Might it simply be that ‘web savvy’ users see blackboard as a dial up connection when they’ve been using T1 or better most of their lives.

To say that BB is “completely unusable” goes a little far.

To say it’s outdated and could use some updates can be said.
But to write a whole ‘blog’ about how ‘crappy’ it is and base its “unusability” on a long interface with crappy icons and cryptic menus as justification for why it is the worst web application is a little much.
Just keeping it real.

By: Li, Chunshen (Don)

Li, Chunshen (Don) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:57:08 +0000

Tom,

Very interesting observation about web usability. I think lots of times software engineers simply can’t put themselves in user’s shoes, I, for one among other things, had such an experience myself, a user reported “I’m confused” (for which I’m grateful), I thought, it’s so simple and straightforward because it’s a simple app. Looking forward to reading more on this topic.

Don

By: Mark Woodman

Mark Woodman — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:37:08 +0000

Tom,

Having just finished grad school, I know the BB pain all too well. I have a friend who works there - and I hear they have a new focus on wanting to improve usability. I’m going to send him your post.

- Mark

By: Sue Waters

Sue Waters — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:51:14 +0000

Well I suppose all I can say is at least you have Blackboard :). We are changing to WebCT CE6.0 (which is now owned by Blackboard) and unless everything has been optimised it crashes the Web browser - which means not usability. So if you have a student, who is studying remotely, and they have low technology skills there is no hope.

Sue