Web Usability on the Nintendo Wii Platform

The aim of the present study is to propose a set of guidelines for designing Internet web sites usable and accessible with the Nintendo Wii console. After an accurate analysis of usability issues and the definition of the typical Wii Internet user, twelve usability guidelines will be described. The named guidelines are focused on the visibility, understandability, clickability and compatibility issues. To prove the effectiveness of the guidelines we have applied them to a test web site. We carried out a comparison test on a sample of forty individuals, selected among the various categories of the potential users of the Nintendo Wii console. The analysis of the resulting information confirms that the revised web site according to our guidelines is more usable and the improvement is more pronounced for weak categories (elderly and individuals with no experience with web browsing). Furthermore the adoption of the guidelines reduces the gap between users with different expertise, accessing a web site with the console.