What do users really care about? a comparison of usability problems found by users and experts on highly interactive websites

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Expert evaluation methods, such as heuristic evaluation, are still popular in spite of numerous criticisms of their effectiveness. This paper investigates the usability problems found in the evaluation of six highly interactive websites by 30 users in a task-based evaluation and 14 experts using three different expert evaluation methods. A grounded theory approach was taken to categorize 935 usability problems from the evaluation. Four major categories emerged: Physical presentation, Content, Information Architecture and Interactivity. Each major category had between 5 and 16 sub-categories. The categories and sub-categories were then analysed for whether they were found by users only, experts only or both users and experts. This allowed us to develop an evidence-based set of 21 heuristics to assist in the development and evaluation of interactive websites.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI '12
Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
EditorsJoseph A. Konstan, Ed H. Chi, Kristina Höök
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherACM
Pages2107-2116
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781450310154
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Event2012 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Austin, United States
Duration: 5 May 201210 May 2012

Conference

Conference2012 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAustin
Period5/05/1210/05/12

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