(Regarding my usability inspection of the WebBrain site, not the site itself.)
The good:
The chosen tasks do a good job of exposing users to the interface's idiosyncrasies.
The tasks require the user to navigate varying depths into the hierarchy, displaying the the vast differences in ease of resource discovery between items located at a shallow depth within the hierarchy and those located deeper.
The use of think-aloud protocol provided many excellent user responses that highlighted and reinforced the empirical data.
The not so good:
Some of the target resources could be reached via multiple paths, making the creation of a benchmark ideal path impossible.
Recommendations:
Another test employing tasks that would differentiate problems with the interface and problems associated with OPD's classification hierarchy better.
Another comparative test studying the efficency of another, more conventional interface to the Open Directory.
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Usability Evaluation of WebBrain.com