Usability Resources
What's Usability?
Usability is a measure of the quality of a customer's experience when using a system such as a website, software application, or mobile app, or a product such as a car or piece of furniture. Delivering customer-friendly products are key to a good customer experience.
These websites provide guidance and resources to help you create websites that are usable, useful, and accessible. Usability.gov is maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and HowTo.gov is managed by the General Services Administration (GSA).
Attend affordable training in web design and usability best practices to improve your government websites and applications. These webinars and courses are open to government and nongovernment employees. Sponsored by GSA.
Government Web Design and Usability Guidelines, 2nd Edition
Use these research-based usability and web design guidelines to make design decisions based on the current and best available evidence. Developed by the Health and Human Services with GSA support.
Common Industry Standard for Usability Requirements (CISU-R)
Use this standard to help define usability requirements for your web and software design projects. The standard provides specifications for context of use; usability methods; and test measures. Developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (The requirements document is at the bottom of the page.)
User Experience Sub-Council (UX) Community of Practice
This interagency group is part of the Web Content Managers Forum, and meets by conference call monthly. Network with other user experience and web design staff and collaborate to develop usability resources. Open to government employees and government contractors (federal, state, local, and tribal) with .gov, .mil, or .edu addresses. Sponsored by the Federal Web Managers Council.
The shortcut to this page is www.gsa.gov/usability.
