International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 3, Issue 11, November-2012 1

ISSN 2229-5518

Web-usability Assessment Methodology

Kamruzzaman Md

Abstract— It has always been a challenging undertake to build a user friendly website and make it a useful resource for the audiences. User satisfaction is related to usability of a product. Here with this paper my effort is to develop a methodology in order to provide a recommendation and guidelines of whether a website meets usability requirement or not. The methodology aims towards an assessment of a website and prescribe a remedial to achieve more usability. I have developed a simple excel spreadsheet to demonstrate the methodology that I have developed. In order to prove the concept and the methodology, I have considered a website as a case. How to apply the methodology on the case website has been explained and the case website has been assessed applying the proposed methodology. In order to assess the website, at first stage, usability factors have been identified. The usability factors are the key components of the assessment process. During the assessment process, based on the websites usability quality and availability, every usability factor gets a weight. The total value (the sum) of all the weights is the usability value of the website. At the final stage of the assessment process the study shows total usability value of the case website. This paper will also explain and describe what usability means to the web users and why it is very essential to focus on usability perspective of a website. Comparision study between websites and remedial guidelines are not in the scope of this paper though the original research work includes both of thsese area based on the Assessment Methodology. This paper merely focusses to the fundamental research of developing a ‘Assesment Methodology’.

Index Terms— Web-usability, Web-assessment, Web-Remedial, Web-assessment methodology, Usability metrics, Usability Problem, Usability factors s.

1 INTRODUCTION

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H AT w e see in technol ogy arena is a r adi cal rev olution of softw are technology and this technology has inte- grated in to internet w orld w hich w e call together ICT
(Informati on Communication Technology). A fter coupl e of years w orking w ith internet and being an IT gr aduate I started realizing that usability per spectiv e of a w ebsite is being ig- nored. Enough attention i s not being paid to make a w ebsite more usable. A s far as my study show s there are only handful researches hav e been accomplished ov er usability of w ebsite though there are about 346,004,403 w ebsites [13] are hosted on the internet and 2,095,006,005 users [13] hav e access to these w ebsites. Looking at the number of w ebsites and users it has become essence that w e i nv est more effort on the usability
factor s w hi ch hav e direct benefit for target user s.
We still need many research studies in this field to achiev e a benchmark so that w ebsites become more consistent in terms of usability. M y initiativ e is to study w eb usability in order to assess and remedy a w ebsite. This paper w ill rev iew to assess the usability status of a w ebsite meaning how usable a w ebsite from end user per spectiv e and remedial to take correctiv e measures. Indirectly this study w ill al so indi cate the user
friendliness of a w ebsite. There are many studies on product usability and some standard definition for usability: “ Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience w hen i nter- acting w ith a product or sy stem — w hether a Web site, a soft- w are application, mobile technology, or any user-operated dev ice” – US department of health and human serv ice. [1]
Unfortunately, Web site desi gn and dev elopment i s often dri v- en by technology or by organizational structure or business objectiv es, rather than by user needs. In recent years
how ev er, Web site ow ners and dev elopers hav e gradual ly be-

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Kamruzzaman M d is an IT gradute and currently working for a mul- tinational company in Brussels, Belgium as an EDM S specialist.

E-mail:zaman.be@gmail.com
gun to acknow ledge and address the issue of usability. This study targets to the problems that the w eb site i s both useful and usable for the intended audiences. There are few studies on this similar topic how ev er my study is different in a sense that it focuses on assessment and remedial aspect of a w ebsite w hereas other s focus on only guidelines of user friendliness.

2 IMPORTANCY AND RESEARCH STRATEGY

2.1 Importancy

This study is important since you hav e a w eb site that is pre- senting your organi zation or yourself to the w orld that w hat you can offer. It has a direct target to promote y our organiza- tion or selling your product or serv ice for community. When you produce your product or serv ice you alw ays think about
the usability to ensure that your customer s or user w ill be
happy in using your product or serv ice. This w ay you al w ays think about product usability. On the other hand w e need to consider the media you are depending on has to be usable that is user friendly and productiv e. So usability of your product as w ell as your media has v alue to your business. This business v alue brings to society therefore it becomes a social v alue since your customer s are directly inv olv ed to soci al activ ities. This w ay my thesi s w ill bring you a v alue to your business as w ell as society if you can ensure that your business w ebsite has a good usability i.e. user friendliness.

2.2 Overview of the research strategy:

By w orking sev er al years w ith internet technology, I hav e gained a good know -how of the technology. Thus I hav e pointed in this paper some of the practi cal problem w hich I hav e experienced for exampl e finding out the usability factors as a primary stage of the study.
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I hav e also gone through different publication related to this idea for example user behav ior char acteri zing, H uman factor s and w eb, w ebsite modeling, tracking w ebsite, back button behav ior on w eb, site map usability test, quality metrics for w eb pages, A ugmenting information seeking. These publica- tions helped me to enhance my findings w hich I hav e articu- lated in this paper too.
There is also an important strategy I follow ed is categor izing users/ v i sitor and w ebsite, differentiate betw een users (target audiences and v isitor s). Thi s w ay you can be speci fic about user needs to a specific w ebsite that is called user-centered w ebsite. I hav e al so introduced a new term on thi s i ssue is “ customi zed w ebsite” w hich is pur pose built in for intended audiences.

2.3 Conclusion (problem domain)

Through this study and strategy I hav e discov ered tw elv e (12) factor s w hich w ill be used to assess the usability of a w ebsite. I hav e chosen a w ebsite (w w w.humanfactor.com) as a case to proof my concept depending on these 12 factor s. I hav e put these tw elv e factor s in an excel spreadsheet as a tool to calcu- late a usability w eight. This w ay I hav e been able to measure a usable v alue for a particul ar w ebsite. The details on how to apply the methodology and assign a v alue to a particular fac-
tor refer to the section 6.1

3 DEFINITION OF WEB USABILITY:

Usability itself has been defi ned w ith some standard defi nition by many organizations. Ver y common definition contai ns ef- fectiv eness, ease of learni ng, efficiency and satisfacti on in us- ing of a product. ISO has defined w ith Usability - ISO 9241: “ The effectiv eness, efficiency and satisfaction w ith w hich spec- ified users achiev e speci fied goals in particul ar env ironments. [2] Where effectiv eness i s the accuracy and completeness w ith w hich specified users can achiev e specified goals in particular env ironments” Efficiency i s the resources expended in rel ation to the accuracy and completeness of goal s achiev ed Satisfac-
tion: the comfort and acceptability of the w ork system to its users and other people affected by its use” Whereas w eb usa- bility focuses on accessible, easy nav igation, simple, easy to find expected informati on, accessible speed i ssues on the other hand softw are usability more concern about user interface, robustness and bug free and a gener al term user friendly. To put it simply, it is a measure of the effectiv eness of your w eb site [3] Usability engineering for the Web grew out of the soft- w are dev elopment di sci pline of H uman Computer Interaction (H CI). H ow ev er, the Web is different from softw are, and the nature of the Web poses new challenges to designers and de- v elopers w ho are tryi ng to incorpor ate usability into their sites. [3]

Due to the global nature of the Web and the w ide-ranging demographics of people accessing the Internet, a target audience can be diffi cult to define.

Div ersity in end user configurations (hardw are, softw are, brow sers, connectiv ity and bandw idth) means that user s may hav e w ildly different experiences of the same site.

Inflated user expectations of Internet technology can be difficult to sati sfy.

The rapidly changing nature of the Web results in shor t dev elopment schedules, making it difficult to incorporate user-centered design techniques.

Unlike a softw are pack age, the user has not made an in- v estment in a particular site, and other options are easil y av ail able and accessible.

H ow ev er, there is general agreement that a usable Web inter- face is one that is accessible, appealing, consistent, clear, sim- ple, nav igable and forgiv ing of user mistakes.

3.1 Common usability Problems:

Some v ery basic common problem of w eb pages that occurs and user/ v isitors suffer from these problems. It is good to say usability doesn’t only depends on these problem meaning it does not necessarily mean that by fixing those problem your w ebsite w ill hav e a perfect usability. Rather usability depends on your user sati sfaction, experience and ergonomics issue. By
this paper I try to find some standard factors that does really matter to hav e a user sati sfaction that is usability for w ebsite in general. Problem also can hav e different behav ior regarding the w ebsite type for example E-commerce, search engine prob- lems might be not the same l ike general w ebsite. H ow ev er it is related to discuss about the problems user s commonly experi- ence. [4]

Downright errors:

Broken links or mi ssing images.

Firew all errors, serv er cannot be contacted, directory brow sing not allow ed (or ev en w orse, allow ed?).

Scri pting error s that pop up an error message, make the

page unusable, or w rite stri ngs of gibberish amongst the text.

H TM L/ XM L coding error s that mean the page doesn't display properl y, or at all.

Annoying or inaccessible page design:

A n "entrance tunnel" or spl ash screen - lots of fl ashy i m- agery but no real content that requires a click to get to the real home page.

A home page that i s entirely graphical and has no w ay for users of non-gr aphical brow sers to get anyw here.

A home page using frames w ith no w ay for user s of cer- tain older and speci alized brow ser s to get anyw here.

Pages w ith such poor contr ast betw een background and

text they are hard to read.

Text in tiny or illegible fonts.

Pages that take minutes to dow nload (ev en w orse if w hen they hav e finished, you w eren't interested in the content anyw ay ).

Content that requires a speci alized plug-in to read it.

Pages that require a specific brow ser to display ni cely.

Links that lead to "under construction" pages.

Links that don't look like li nks so you hav e to scan ev er y line of text to find them.

Link color schemes w here y ou can't tell w hich ones you hav e already v i sited.

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Links w ith badly chosen targets that display numerous hidden w indow s on the desktop, break the Back button, or display pages w ithout the necessary menus to use them properl y.

Forms w here you don't know w hat the site ow ners w ant

to do w ith the information y ou are asked to supply.

Forms that don't explain properly w hat you need to enter, or don't let you go back and amend any errors.

Pages w ith typogr aphical or grammatical errors, confus- ing and poorly w ritten text, or inconsi stent terminology.

The list abov e touches on things that most surfer s w ill recog- nize from time to time. It doesn't include the more subjectiv e issues of appropri ate and up-to-date design, using the right
tone for the intended audience and so on, as these are so indi- v idual to a giv en site. N or does it mention sites that i nstall, w ithout w arning y ou, smal l progr ams that lurk in the sy stem
tray (dow nload assi stants, update assistants, and other pesky
little things). This might not decrease the site usability by it- self, but it certainly makes sure that w e w on't v isit again.

4 EXISTING STUDY OVER WEB USABILITY AND ANALYSIS:

There are few studies hav e been conducted by some organiza-
tion and i ndiv idual s as w ell. One study from “ H uman Factors International ” [5] points out some new methodol ogy to show how usability can be archiv ed in desi gn phase of a w ebsi te. It
focuses more on corpor ate background and human factors in order to accompli sh a precautions measure of usability. There I found an interesting exampl e, w hich can giv e you an idea of making w eb nav igati on acceptable easily to ev eryone ev en to disable people.
It is about maki ng a door handle. .” A ffordance is the match betw een the appear ance and the behav ior of things on Web pages, or more broadly, in engineering artifacts in the World. We all base our expectations of how something w ill w ork on our experience w ith simil ar-looking things. For example, con- sider the door handle below. You may nev er hav e seen a door handle quite like this one before, but based on your experience w ith the w orld, you can predict how to use it! ”
Because it’s attached to a door, you know it’s probably lets you open the door. Its lev er shape suggests pressing up or dow n on the thin section. The round area suggests an axis of rota-
tion. Or, you can grab the thin section and pull. Thus, this structure affords turning, pulling, and other actions. One study ov er usability and w eb has described some useful points about target audiences. This research specifies some method on how to define target audience. In my opinion it is really important to define your target audience as it guides you to- w ards user-centered w ebsite. It is because you w ill hav e an idea about your user char acter, experience, needs and may be their background.
Regarding this study here are some methodologies are sug- gested to define audiences:[6] “ One of the most common w ays
used to collect information for Web site audience definiti on is a user surv ey. On-line surv eys can be posted on a pre-existing site, e-mailed directly to k now n user s, or posted to new s- groups and mailing lists. A n audience definition surv ey may collect any or all of the follow ing informati on:
user profile (demographic informati on, job or recreational preferences), surfing profile (how do they use the Web), site usage (likes, di slikes, task requirements), and lev el of technol- ogy (hardw are, brow ser type, connection speed).
The surv ey method is rel ativ ely quick and inexpensiv e but the draw back to this method is that it may not result in a repre- sentativ e sample. For example, the respondents' may only be those di ssatisfied w ith a cur rent site or sophi sticated enough to use an on-line form. For this reason, information gathered in an audience definition surv ey should ideally be suppl e- mented by other sources”
One real life implementation of online technical suppor t is at my w ork place. We hav e a w eb database w here w e receiv e customer ’s reported problem email and reply to customer back, put comments, attach file, incident search and assign incidents to support people and some more activ ities. Tech- nical support people are users of thi s sy stem. I am one of the users among them, for me it took more than one month to know and nav igate all the option I need to w ork on (w ith the earlier v ersi on). I must not say it is a complicated sy stems ra-
ther I w ould say it had less usability v alue. Firstl y, the mailbox
outlook w as not big enough to find the subject of the emails. You hav e to scroll to go to the subject for ev ery email. You can imagine if you are on email duty meaning you hav e to log all emails into the database that you receiv e all day long and you
hav e to scroll the ev ery email for the subject headi ng. This means you l oose approximately more than 1 hour ev er y day just to see the email title. This means it giv es you less produc-
tion than expected. N ow this online support tool s has changed the screen style and w here you do not hav e to scroll to see the subject rather you hav e a button called extended v iew. By this button you can hav e a bigger v iew of the total mailbox, w hich much easier to access the mailbox and all are easy to find. Thus this tool gets more usable to users. This prov es usability can sav e your time; giv e you higher productiv ity and sati sfac- tion in w orking env ironment.
“ A nother study w hich show s mostly user behav ior in search- ing information through w eb. This study inv estigates w hat types of know ledge are relev ant for Web-based infor mation seeking, and w hich know ledge structures and str ategies are inv olv ed. Tw o inv estigational studies are presented. First one is tw elv e internet expert interv iew ed about search str ategy and per form a reali stic seri es of search. From this study a model of information seeki ng on WWW i s deriv ed and then
tested in a second study. In the second experiment effects of
Web experience and domai n-specific background know ledge are inv estigated w ith a seri es of search tasks in an economic related domain. This study concludes w ith a result that you need tw o combinations of know ledge- Domai n expert and Internet experience for meaning informati on searching on the
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w eb. In my opinion this result might not carry alw ay s the same consistent since more people becoming a good Internet users and w hile w e are adv ancing tow ards know ledgebase Internet thus domain expert may not be an essential skill to find meaningful information on the w eb. Instead w e w ould require internet experienced users” .

5 IDENTIFIABLE USABILITY FACTORS:

The factors that are mentioned in this paper are found from different simil ar research w hich I hav e studied extensiv ely in order to find out important factor s for my methodology. The factor s that I have identified are more related to user usability aspects w hich concerns target audiences. The below identified factor s hav e been categorized in to higher lev el and low er lev- el factors. Thus I hav e grouped low er lev el factor s (sub- factor s) into higher-lev el factors. Identifying sub-factors hav e direct relation to Remedial process w hich has been discussed more in the M ethodology section of the paper.

5.1 List of the identified Factors and Sub-factors

1.0. Consistency of presentation and controls:

1.1 Underline: av oi d mixing underlined text w ith underlined links
1.2 Link label: different links pointing to the same resource should hav e the same label
1.3 Email l abel: label s associated to a giv en email address should be consistent color 1.4 Color consistency: color s used
for background/ foreground/ links should be consistent among pages
1.5 Background consi stency : background images shoul d be consi stently used nav -bar consistency: links included in nav i- gation bar s shoul d be consistent among pages

2.0 Adequate feedback:

2.1 Freshness: pages should be time- and author- stamped

3.0. N atural organization of the information

4.0 Contextual navigation: I n each state the required naviga- tion options are available

4.1 N OFRA M ES v ali dity: N OFRA M ES should be present and it should contain equiv alent nav igation options
4.2 Link to home: each page should contain a link to the home page
4.3 Logical path: each page should contain link s to each i nter- mediate page in the path connecting the page to the home
4.4 Self-referential pages: pages should not contain links to themselv es
4.5 Fr ame titles: frames shoul d set the “ title” attribute
4.6 Local links v alidity: links that are local to the w ebsite should point to existing resources
4.7 External links v al idity: l inks to external resources should be periodically checked

5.0 Efficient navigation:

5.1 Site depth: the number of links that need to be foll ow ed from home page to other pages should not exceed a threshold
5.2 Table coding: table components should hav e explicit w idth and height
5.3 Image coding: images should al so hav e explicit w idth and height
5.4 Dow nload time: pages should dow nload w ithin giv en time threshold
5.6 Recycled gr aphics: images used in the w ebsite should be shared (so that brow sers can cache them)
5.7 H idden elements: pages should not contain elements that cannot be show n (like maps not associ ated to any image)

6.0 Clear and meaningful labels:

6.1 Informativ e link l abels: links pointing to heav y/ plug-in dependent resources should speci fy that in the label
6.2 Explicit mailto addresses: labels of “ mailto:” link s should contain the actual email address
6.3 M issing page title: pages should hav e a title
6.4 Table header s: tables should hav e header s and summaries
6.5 Form prompts: w ithin forms, text input fiel ds should hav e a label

7.0 Robustness: Robustness of the site with respect to the technology used by users

7.1 Brow ser compatibility: H TM L code should not use propri e- tary structures
7.2 Safe col ors: page elements should use w eb-safe color s
7.3 Link targets: av oid “ _bl ank” target in frames; use correct targets for link s leav ing the frames
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7.4 H TM L v alidity: only standard H TM L code should be used
7.5 Portable font-faces: standard font faces should be used in addition to desired ones
7.6 Color contrast: background and foreground color s combi- nations should prov ide suffi cient contrast

8.0 Flexibility:

8.1 Image A LT: images should hav e alternativ e textual descri p- tions
8.2 Other medi a A LT: v ideos, audios, applets and other objects should hav e alternativ e textual descriptions
8.3 Imagemap links: link s embedded in images shoul d be av ail able also in textual format
8.4 A uto-refresh: duplicate auto-refresh links in the page body
(both forw ard and backw ard ones)
8.5 Forced dow nloading: links embedding an image in their label cannot be follow ed w ithout dow nloading the image
8.6 Tables/ frames/ font resi zi ng: relativ e sizes should be used

9.0 Support of users’ goals

9.1 Form coding: forms should hav e “ submit” , “ reset” buttons

10.0 Support of User profile

10.1 User profile: Supporti ng user profile w ould be an im- portant factor if a w ebsite has certain target user s. User s can sav e their profile w ith their required settings so ev ery time they w ork w ith the w ebsite, do not hav e to mov e their eyes ov er w hole page.

11.0 M aintainability

11.1 Relativ e links: URLs that are local to the w ebsite should be relativ e

6 PROPOSED METHODOLOGY:

Usability factors that hav e been identified as mentioned in the section 6.0 are the main elements to dev elop the assessment methodology.
In order to demonstrate the methodology I hav e dev eloped a simple demo tool using excel spreadsheet w hich i s show n be-
low in section 6.2. There are tw elv e main factors hav e been identified to assess the case w ebsite. Ev ery major factors hav e their sub-factor s. Thus the sub-factor s hav e been grouped into a major factor. The w eight of usability v alues is distributed to the sub-factors. The sum of the sub-factor w eight i s the total w eight for a particul ar factor. I suppose every sub-factor here
has a maximum w eight of ‘4’ and minimum w eight of ‘0’. By giv ing a w eight to a factor against the w ebsites usability quali- ty and av ail ability, it i s easily recognizable w hich factors i s more or less sufferer in ter ms of usability. Once w e hav e the w eight on each sub-factor the remedial steps can be taken to cure the particular issue that is found in a sub-factor w ith low w eight. Thus it may not hav e to redesign or recoding the w hole w ebsite r ather than a module corresponding the sub- factor w hich gets low w eight. This is a good reason to identify the sub-factor s and distribute the w eights among the sub- factor s. In terms of w eight calculating there are tw o categories of sub-factor s identifi able- Positiv e and N egative. The N ega-
tiv e sub-factor s (in red col or ) has negativ e v alue and positiv e sub-factors (in black color) hav e positiv e v alue. For example under major factor “ M aintainability ” the sub-factor ‘Data Structure Complexity’ has negativ e v alue. If the ‘Data Struc- ture Complexity’ is high for this sub-factor, it gets higher nega-
tiv e w eight. This means the major factor “ M ai ntainability” w ill receiv e less positiv e w eight w hen the sub-factor s are summed. Depending on the nature of a w ebsite new factor s can be add- ed or existing factor s can be modified. A ppli cation of the methodology has been explained in further extend in the next section.
A w eb based tool can be dev eloped to w eigh the usable factor s in more conv enient w ay. A s my targets is not to dev elop a tool but assessing a w ebsite I hav e used here an excel spreadsheet
to present my methodology w ith a demo assessment.

6.1 How to apply the proposed methodology:

It is necessary to mention that this methodology w ould not be a suitable approach for ordi nary user s or internet v isitor s. Ra- ther internet experts or highly experienced user s w oul d be suitable per son to apply this methodology. It is because there are some technological term that need to be understood v ery w ell before apply ing the methodology for assessi ng a w ebsite.
In real life application it i s recommended to dev elop an auto- mated tool in order to implement the methodology. It w ill be v ery conv enient to use an automated tool w hile applying the methodology. It w ould not be v ery difficult to dev elop a tool as I hav e demonstrated the required functionality and mathe- matical cal culation in a spreadsheet that is show n in section
6.2. When applying this methodology it w ould be suggested to inv olv e more than a single person in order to achiev e a more appropriate outcome. This is because the sub-factor w eight giv en by somebody may v ary from somebody else depending on somebody’s know ledge i n the domai n of the sub-factors. Therefore I w ould suggest at least ten persons input into the tool w hen assessing a w ebsi te against the factors. Once all i n- put from different expert is found the result can be av eraged
to obtain a consi stent usabil ity v alue for a w ebsite. The auto- mated tool w hich takes the input according to the sub-factor should be capable of producing different kind of statics con- cerning the methodol ogy. For example the tool should be able to produce the av erage v alue of the ‘nav igational’ usability w hich has been giv en by the all participants w ho hav e as-
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sessed the w ebsite. Thus the assessment can be granuli zed as per sub-factor s and the major-factors. Thi s w ay the proposed methodology can be implemented to perform a real life w eb assessment.

6.2 Factor matrix (an example):

Fig. 3. The figure shows the total weight and average value in comparing to the maximum weight of the factors.

Fig. 1. The figure illustrate the values in factor-wise. The illustrated 12 facotrs are catagorised as main and subfactors. The value (%) of the facors are de- termined by applying the methodology on the Human Factors International website.

7 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH:

This thesis w ork i s an indiv i dual effort and it is not suffi cient to establish a benchmark in terms of w eb-usability. We need a collectiv e effort to achiev e a matured shape of the w eb usabil- ity areas. Since this i s a new grow ing fi eld, there are not much av ail able resources, documentation and w hite paper s y et to study in depth of this issue. So far, I found only one publica-
tion, w hich is directly related to the w eb-usability domain. In most cases publication about usability focus on usabil ity of mechanical engineering (machineries) and product usability and in combination of human factor s in philosophical aspects. But there are only a few number of organization and indiv idu- als w ho are w orking ov er w eb-usability. Therefore in most cases, I had to rely on the Internet resources to inv estigate any issue like user behav ior, human factors of w eb, general usabi l- ity and usability factors. Thi s is one of the reasons you might find many references mentioned in this paper are Internet based resource. If I could hav e more resources and enough time to study in depth I w ould be able to offer a better meth- odology and guidelines in w eb-usability domain in gener al.

Fig. 2. The figure#2 is a continuation of figure#1

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8 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK:

With this research w ork, I hav e dev eloped a method of as- sessing w eb usability factors as w ell as to prov ide a prescrip- tion in order to increase the usability that I found through my assessment methodol ogy. To prov ide a remedi al prescri ption I did a compari son study betw een tw o w ebsites though I hav e not included the compari son analysi s in this paper. Thi s w ay it w as possible to point the usability lack s and to be more prag- matic in referring the assessment methodology as w ell as re- medial standpoint. In terms of different w ebsites and it’s di f- ferent purposes, it is not alw ays apparent to follow the usabi l- ity factor I found in my methodology. The usability factors may v ary from w ebsite to w ebsite. This means assessment
factor s or sub-factor s depend on the nature of the w ebsite and target or current audiences of the business. In case you w ould like to follow my methodol ogy (assessing) and remedial for a particul ar w ebsite, you w ould need to define the w ebsite in terms of its pur pose and define the target audiences. A ssess- ment of H uman Factor s Inter national w ebsite in this paper is a demo implementati on of my ideas through the proposed methodology and it is an effort to giv e a mathematical v alue of w eb usability for a w ebsite.
I hope to w ork further in the similar research fiel d w hile this paper w oul d be a baseline to mov e forw ard. Thi s research is a parti al accomplishment of my ideas and thought regarding w eb-usability. N ext step w ould be to dev elop a hybri d tool for assessing w eb quality and usability. To dev elop such hybrid tool it w ould require a l ot of effort in defining w ebsite nature as w ell as requirements of target users. I w ould emphasi s again that w e need a collectiv e effort to build any standard approach or methodology in this field. N ielsen N orman Group (N N group) is the pioneer organi zation that has already ap- proached tow ards a success achiev ement in the same field
[12]. We need more intiativ es on this area and more research organization to conduct the research and dev elop a w or ld of users.

REFERENCES

[1] U.S department of health and human services- Usability, http:/ / usability.gov/ basics/ index.html

[2] The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

w w w.w 3.org/ 2002/ Talks/ 0104-usabilityprocess/ slide3-0.html

[3] M urray, George and Costanzo, Tania (1999), ISSN 1201-4338, Infor- mation Technology Service, Library and A rchives service, Canada w w w.collectionscanada.ca/ 9/ 1/ p1-260-e.html

[4] Siteusability.com, A online company http:/ / siteusability.com/ mistakes.html

[5] Dick, Rubinstein, Ph.D. CUA , (2003A ) Successful A pproach to Im- plementing a Corporate Web Design Standard.[5] Rubinstein, Dick Ph.D., CUA , M ay 22, 2003

[6] Library and A rchives service, Canada

w w w.collectionscanada.ca/ 9/ 1/ p1-260-e.html

[7] H ölscher, Christoph & Strube, Gerhard (2000) Web Search Behavior of Internet Experts and N ew bies, w w w 9.org/ w 9cdrom/ 81/ 81.html

[8] Chinarel.com, Online Reliability Resources and Services w w w.chinarel.com/ know ledge/ rel_glossary.htm

[9] M 4C- A strategic marketing consulting company

w w w.meta4creations.com/ smallbiz/ 2w ebsite-types.htm

[10] W3C- Web accessibility initiative, w w w.w 3.org/ WA I/ Resources

[11] Cabinet office, UK, w w w.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

[12] N N / G N ielsen N orman Group, A usability pioneer company w w w.nngroup.com

[13] Internet World Stats http:/ / w w w.internetw orldstats.com/ stats.htm

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