Abstract
This chapter reports on the experience regarding usability evaluation of web portals. The study is placed in Croatian web sphere where the most visited portals are the broad-reach web ones. Consequently, such a research may be of interest to the communities with comparable user population and market characteristics. The evaluation methodology advocates a number of usability test methods along with specialists' inspection. The results of the first study indicated that the chosen research instruments, measures and methods for usability testing were consistent. Conversely, the results of the second study, which employs the guideline-based inspection, did not agree with those obtained through the end-user testing. Although showing significant potential, the methodology needs to be improved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Boye, J. (2006) Improving portal usability. CMS Watch. http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/151-Portal-Usability.
Brantley, S., Armstrong, A. and Lewis, K.M. (2006) Usability testing of a customizable library web portal. College & Research Libraries 67, 2.
Brooke, J. (1996) SUS: a “quick and dirty” usability scale. In Jordan, P.W., Thomas, B., Weerdmeester, B.A., McClelland, A.L. (Eds.): Usability Evaluation in Industry. Taylor and Francis, London.
Carstens, D.S. and Patterson, P. (2005) Usability Study of travel websites. Journal of Usability Studies 1, 1.
GemiusAudience, (2007). http://www.cati.hr/GemiusAudience-ozujak.pdf.
Granić, A., Mitrović, I. and Marangunić, N. (2008) Experience with usability testing of web portals. In Cordeiro, J., Filipe, J., Hammoudi, S. (Eds). Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies: WEBIST 2008; Vol. 2: Web Interfaces and Applications. INSTICC Press, Portugal, pp.161–167.
Hornbæk, K. (2006) Current practice in measuring usability: Challenges to usability studies and research. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 64, 2.
Hornbæk, K. and Law, E.L-C. (2007) Meta-Analysis of Correlations Among Usability Measures. CHI 2007 Proceedings, April 28–May 3, San Jose, California, USA.
ISO/IEC 25062:2006 (2006) Software engineering – Software product Quality Req. and Evaluation (SQuaRE) – Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports.
Klausegger, C. (2006). Evaluating internet portals – an empirical study of acceptance measurement based on the austrian national tourist office's service portal. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism 6, 3–4.
MIT Usability Guidelines (2004) http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/selected.guidelines.pdf.
Moraga, M., Calero, C., Piattini, M., and Diaz, O. (2007) Improving a Portlet Usability Model. Software Quality Journal 15, 2
Nielsen, J. (1994) Heuristic evaluation. In Nielsen, J., Mack, R. (Eds.): Usability Inspection Methods. John Wiley and Sons Inc., New York.
Shackel, B. (1991) Usability – context, framework, design and evaluation. In Shackel, B., Richardson, S. (eds.): Human Factors for Informatics Usability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 21–38.
Tatnall, A. (Ed.), (2005) Web Portals: The New Gateways to Internet Information and Services. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey.
Theng, Y.L. and Soh, E.S. (2005) An Asian Study of Healthcare Web Portals: Implications for Healthcare Digital Libraries. Proc. of 8th Int. Conf. on Asian Digital Libraries, ICADL. Bangkok.
Tomić-Koludrović, I., Petrić, M., (2004) Identities on the Net: Gender and National Stereotypes on Croatian Broad-Reach Portals. Društvena istraživanja 13, 4–5.
Tractinsky, N., Katz, A. and Ikar, D. (2000) What is beautiful is usable. Interacting with Computers 13, 2.
Tsui, W.C., Paynter, J., (2004) Cultural usability in the globalisation of news portal. In Masoodian, M., Jones, S., and Rogers, B. (Eds.): Computer Human Interaction, Proceedings of the 6th Asia Pacific Conference, APCHI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3101. Springer.
Tullis, T.S. and Stetson, J.N. (2004) A Comparison of Questionnaires for Assessing Website Usability. Proc. of UPA Conf. Minneapolis. http://home.comcast.net/˜tomtullis/publications/ UPA2004TullisStetson.pdf.
Waloszek, G. (2001) Portal Usability – Is There Such A Thing?. SAP Design Guild, Edition 3. http://www.sapdesignguild.org/editions/edition3/overview_edition3.asp.
Wood, J. (2004) Usability Heuristics Explained, iQ Content. http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_32.
Wright, P. and Monk, A. (1991) A cost-effective evaluation method for use by designers. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 35(6), 891–912.
Acknowledgements
This chapter describes the results of research being carried out within the project 177-0361994-1998 Usability and Adaptivity of Interfaces for Intelligent Authoring Shells funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia. The experiment was conducted at the Department of Visual Communication Design, Arts Academy.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Granić, A., Mitrović, I., Marangunić, N. (2009). Web Portal Design: Employment of a Range of Assessment Methods. In: Papadopoulos, G., Wojtkowski, W., Wojtkowski, G., Wrycza, S., Zupancic, J. (eds) Information Systems Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/b137171_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/b137171_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-84809-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-84810-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)