Wageningen, 6 June 2006 – The Usability Award 2006 has been granted this year to Rabobank’s web site. Rabobank Group is a full-range financial services provider founded on cooperative principles, operating on national and international levels. Each year, the Usability Award is granted to the Dutch organization with the most user-friendly web site. Over 900 web sites have been submitted by the Dutch public. Out of these, the ten best were evaluated by a jury consisting of several professional usability experts, including this year Mr. Joerka, chairman of the Dutch chapter of SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction of the Association for Computing Machinery). The web sites are assessed on several criteria, such as navigation, lay-out, and quality of text. Rabobank’s web site http://www.rabobank.nl/ was chosen because of the clear navigation, the calm effect of using white spaces, and the accessible presentation of text.

Development of Rabobank's software products and web applications takes place at Rabobank Nederland Groep ICT, the company's IT branch. Their user experience center owns a state-of-the-art usability lab, designed and maintained by Noldus Information Technology. Suzette Demeijer, usability consultant at Rabobank's user experience center, says "Receiving the Usability Award 2006 is a great acknowledgement of our efforts to optimally support our customers. By conducting extensive research and on-going evaluation and improvement of our products and applications, throughout the design and development process using Noldus' hardware and software, we were able to achieve such a high standard and reach this significant goal."  

Noldus has contributed to Rabobank's success by providing the necessary tools to conduct usability evaluations, which are performed on average 60 to 80 times a year. Next to brochures, web sites, computer applications, and forms, also products such as cash dispensers, bank statements, and mobile banking are evaluated. All data are collected with use of The Observer XT. Multiple cameras, microphones, video and computer equipment provide an extensive observation setting for test participants, with sufficient space for over ten observers. A photographic presentation of the Rabobank usability lab can be found here.

The Usability Award is an initiative of 2C Usability and is intended to increase the awareness among the general public for usability of web sites.