Usability Evaluation Methods and Principles for the Web (original) (raw)

Web Usability: Principles and Evaluation Methods

Journal of Web Engineering

Current Web applications are very complex and high sophisticated software products, whose usability can heavily determine their success or failure. Defining methods for ensuring usability is one of the current goals of the Web Engineering research. Also, much attention on usability is currently paid by Industry, which is recognizing the importance of adopting methods for usability evaluation before and after the application deployment. This chapter introduces principles and evaluation methods to be adopted during the whole application lifecycle for promoting usability. For each evaluation method, the main features, as well as the emerging advantages and drawbacks are illustrated, so as to support the choice of an evaluation plan that best fits the goals to be pursued and the available resources. The design and evaluation of a real application is also described for exemplifying the introduced concepts and methods.

A Method for Website Usability Evaluation: A Comparative Analysis

Graphical user interfaces design in software development process focuses on maximizing usability and the user's experience, in order to make the interaction for users easy, flexible and efficient. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the usability satisfaction degree of a web-based system. The proposed method has been accomplished in two phases and implemented on an airlines website as a case study. In the first phase, a website usability test is implemented by a number of users, and then the results obtained are translated into charts for a final web-based system evaluation in the second phase. The results achieved were satisfactory, since the places where the weaknesses and gaps in the website are identified and recommended solutions to avoid them are drawn. The authenticity of the results have been confirmed by comparing them with user opinions acquired from a questionnaire, which proves the precision in which the website is rated.

A Comparative Analysis of Website Usability Evaluation Techniques

World Journal of Innovative Research

Most system interfaces do not meet user intuition in terms of both context and the underlying actions thereof, hence reducing user's task execution efficiency. This translate into the amount of time taken to learn, recall and complete the procedure for certain task with respect to a given system or device. It was in the light of this that this work took a look at the existing human computer interaction (HCI) usability testing techniques with the intention of empirically establishing which among cognitive walkthrough, heuristic evaluation and user group is the most efficient in identifying and correcting system's usability problems. To create the research pathway a detail review of related work was undertaken to identify the lacuna therein for the research direction. A case study of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) website was used as a specimen for administering the usability test methods and the outcome of each was documented. The research methodology adopted a purposive and stratified sampling technique to reduced biased and increased reliability of the representative sample chosen for this research. The sample chosen was an extract of final year undergraduate students of Federal College of Education (FCE) Pankshin, an affiliate of University of Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. The students have taken a course in Human Factor in System Design, which provided them with adequate training in usability test techniques, 20 out of the total 30 students with the requisite skill were chosen to undertake the test process. The data collated passed through paired sample T-test procedure of the compare-mean analysis with confidence interval percentage of 95%, using the IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. The outcome of the T-test showed that the respective means of cognitive-walkthrough, heuristic-evaluation and user-group are 5.750, 4.900 and 6.350, with respective correlation coefficients of 0.192, 0.54 and 0.624. This shows a strong relationship between each pair of the test techniques. However, user-group usability test technique with the highest mean accuracy interval of 1.450 is the best in terms of performance relative to the other two techniques. Finally, the result of the analysis as well as charts created and the participant's findings were summarized thus proffering way forward and recommendations for the improvement of system and user interaction.

Usability Engineering Methods for the Web Results From a Usability Study

The paper presents the results of a study on usability methods for evaluating Web sites. lt summarizes the "Heuristics for Web Communications, " and reports the practical experiences with these heuristics, contrasting them with the "Keevil Index " and combining them with user testing with thinking aloud. It concludes that working with the "Heuristics for Web Communications " takes more time and effort than working with the "Kevil Index," but produces more consistent results. The heuristics proved to be applicable both in heuristic evaluation and in combination with user testing. Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag präsentiert eine Studie über Evaluationsmethoden zur Web-Usability. Er beschreibt die "Heuristics for Web Communications " und berichtet von den praktischen Erfahrungen mit den Heuristiken, die mit dem "Keevil Index" verglichen und mit Benutzertests mit lautem Denken kombiniert werden. Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass eine Evaluation mit den beschriebenen Heuristiken gegenüber dem "Keevil Index" mehr Zeit und Aufwand erfordert, aber konsistentere Ergebnisse bringt. Die Heuristiken haben sich sowohl in der experten-zentrierten Evaluation als auch in Kombination mit dem Benutzertest insgesamt als geeignete Evaluationsmethode erwiesen.

ASSESSING WEB SITE USABILITY MEASUREMENT

Web evaluation has been used in decade to validate the web site to see how it performs. When analysing a web site, typical factors to be considered are the way the information is organized and presented, and how to access and navigate the informative structure [1]. Usability evaluations evaluate the ease of use of a web site functions and see either the user can perform their tasks efficiently. This paper review existing usability standards and models in determining an appropriate model for evaluating the usability of web site. Previous research are reviewed and comparison and analysis of existing usability model and identification of usability criteria and characteristics for web site is made to identify the attribute or characteristic that should be used in evaluating web site.This study proposed an extension of the QUIM model as a basic model for usability model for a web site. Therefore, a set of guidelines to assist in determining design and usability

Evaluation of the usability of web-based applications

Vojnotehnicki glasnik, 2017

The paper emphasizes the importance of the usability of Web-based applications as an essential condition for attracting and retaining customers. At the beginning of the paper, a general classification of methods for usability evaluation is given in order to show different views of researchers on usability. In order to ensure a Web application lifetime, it is necessary to measure and evaluate many features that affect software usability. The paper gives a brief overview of the most commonly used methods for evaluating the usability of Web-based applications published in the last decade, chosen by the author. Since decision making is not an easy process, the conclusion gives recommendations to be specially considered when selecting a method.

An Effective Approach for Evaluating Usability of Web Sites

Enterprise Business Modeling, Optimization Techniques, and Flexible Information Systems, 2013

University Websites have been one of the important Websites for students, university personnel, and researchers. However, usability has long been a major concern within Websites. This chapter develops an evaluation approach using usability criteria and the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) for the comparison of Websites in a fuzzy environment. Firstly, alternative Websites are examined by experts using usability criteria in the literature. Then, FAHP is used to determine the usability criteria weights from subjective and imprecise judgments of the experts. Finally, Websites are compared based on usability criteria weights.

Usability evaluation based on Web design perspectives

… , 2007. ESEM 2007. …, 2007

Applications worldwide, Web quality assurance, and more specifically Web usability have become key success factors. Therefore, this work proposes a usability evaluation technique based on the combination of Web design perspectives adapted from existing literature, and heuristics. This new technique is assessed using a controlled experiment aimed at measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of our technique, in comparison to Nielsen's heuristic evaluation. Results indicated that our technique was significantly more effective than and as efficient as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation. First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement 0-7695-2886-4/07 $20.00

Analysis of usability evaluation according to the quality standards

Revista de Tecnología Informática, 2020

This research provides a study of usability as a quality attribute of Web pages, using as a benchmark the requirements that must be followed under the International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission 25000. The methods used to carry out this process are studied, as well as the description of the aspects to be considered for evaluation thereof. It carried out a review of the literature on software tools for measuring the usability of Web pages and disadvantages. The methodology that can be used is determined to perform the corresponding evaluation process and the results are established using a practical case.

Integration of Multiple Techniques to Support Usability Evaluation of Web Applications

In this paper, we discuss some issues related to automatic support to usability evaluation. The discussion is based on our experience with WebRemUSINE, a tool that we have designed and developed in order to perform intelligent analysis of Web browser logs using the information contained in the task model of the application. This approach supports remote usability evaluation of Web sites.