Blogger.com usability review

http://tvustudent.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/bloggerheuristicusabilityevaluation/
The main conclusions from this evaluation:

Blogger is generally very usable and useful to users with very good usability.

■4.2 average score.
■One third of the areas of Blogger’s usability scored 4.
■5 out of 12 areas of Blogger’s usability scored 5 – exemplar usability: design a simple state space; visible system status; matches language with target user group needs; facilitates learning and effective error management was the most successful element of Blogger.
■Only 3 areas of Blogger’s interface showed minor concern about usability – giving users control and freedom, help, and navigation.
No main areas with significant issues, but the most significant were the poor utility of linking functionality and poor utility and features for managing blog performance and stats.
■No areas with serious usability flaws or catastrophes.
■The ‘Area for Improvement’ highlighted within this evaluation indicate how this could be improved and are recommendations for further redesign.

Started abother blog on Wordpress.com

As part of this research project for my dissertation in Blog usability I am creating different blogs using different Blogware. This is so that I can conduct a heuristic evaluation of the usability of the different blogging tools. The other blog can be found at http://.tvustudent.wordpress.com/

Blogging dissertation for MSc

I am writing a dissertation about the usability of Blogware (blog publishing tools) and the relationship between this and the usability of weblogs (blogs) they publish. My hypothesis is that Blogware with better usability will be used more, and the Weblogs they generate will have better usability and be used more and be more successful. The measure of will be the Technorati rankings and the % of weblogs generated by Blogware in the Technorati rankings. The measure of usability will be through an Expert Heuristic Evaluation of Blogware tools and Usability Testing of the highest Technorati ranked Weblogs they generate. The focus of this study will be on free browser-based web-hosted Blogware. The second level of scope for this study will be it will focus on personal lifestyle weblogs. By that I mean weblogs which are created by Hobbyist bloggers for personal reasons, not for business objectives. Blogs generated for business reasons are out of scope. The content of the Weblogs will be whatever those individuals are writing about. The Weblogs will be chosen according to those with the highest Technorati ranking at the time of the study generated by the top 5 free browser-based web-hosted Blogware tools. They will also be created by sole individuals, so not by group authors. As my investigation continues the story will evolve...