Website Usability Evaluation

Overview

Goals

To understand and apply the concepts and theories of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to evaluate website design

Learning Objectives

By the end of this activity, students will be able to: - perform the user analysis and develop user profiles for a website - perform task analysis and develop the hierarchical task analysis (HTA) diagram - to conduct usability evaluation of a website.

Context

User centered system design is not an academic process where some cookbook formula can be applied. Nor is it an intuitive process where a programmer can sit in their office and think they know what the user and their tasks are. Rather, it is a hands-on process that requires you to go out and identify actual users, talk to them about what tasks they are trying to do, and understand the entire context of their work. To begin with, you are required to select a website to be evaluated. You should study the intended users, their tasks, and the working context of their actions. Then you need to evaluate the website interface by conducting usability test and analyses to identify the problems with the interface.