Abstract
The functional description of EWEB, a tool for automatic empirical evaluation of web navigation, is presented in this document. EWEB supports naïve evaluators for designing experiments which contain experiment type (within-subject, factorial, etc.), web logs to be captured (time, visited pages, etc.), task models (search task, free navigation) and surveys (questionnaires, card sorting) to be performed by experimental participants. EWEB stores navigational data preserving the experiment structure and supports data analysis and interpretation, with the possibility of generating usability metrics. Requiring minimal installation on client computer, EWEB can be used for both lab evaluation and remote evaluation in multiple browsers. One empirical web study, designed and performed by means of EWEB, is described in order to illustrate its validity as a research tool.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Shneiderman, B.: Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1992)
Salmerón, L., Salmerón, L., Cañas, J.J., Kintsch, W., Fajardo, I.: Are expert users always better searchers? Interaction of expertise and semantic grouping in hypertext search tasks. Behaviour and Information Technology 24(6), 471–475 (2005)
AccessWatch (n.d.), (Retrieved on February 2007) http://www.accesswatch.com/
Analog (n.d.) (Retrieved on February 2007), from http://www.analog.cx/
WebTrends (n.d.) (Retrieved on February 2007), http://www.webtrends.com/
Ellis, R.D., Jankowski, T.B., Jasper, J.E., Tharuvai, B.S.: Listener: a tool for client-side investigation of hypermedia navigation behavior. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 30(6), 573–582 (1998)
Etgen, M., Cantor, J.: What does getting WET (Web Event-logging Tool) Mean for Web Usability? In: Proceeding of 5th International Conference on Human Factors and the Web, Gaithersburg (1999), http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/hfweb/proceedings/etgen-cantor/index.html
Scholtz, J., Laskowski, S.: Developing usability tools and techniques for designing and testing web sites. In: Proceedings of the fourth conference on Human factors and the web. Basking Ridge, NJ (1998) Available at http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/
Gonzalez, M.: ANTS: An Automatic Navigability Testing Tool for hypermedia. In: Proceedings of the Eurographics Multimedia’99 Workshop, Milán, Italy. Multimedia’99, Italy, Springer, Wein, Austria (2000)
Paganelli, L., Paternò, F.: Intelligent Analysis of User Interactions with Web Applications. In: Proceedings of ACM IUI 2002. San Francisco, CA. pp. 439–445 (2002)
HotJava (n.d.) (Retrieved on the 10th of February 2007) http://java.sun.com/products/archive/hotjava/index.html
WebWindow (n.d.) (Retrieved on the 10th of February 2007) http://www.javio.com/webwindow/webwindow.html
Edmonds, A.: Uzilla: A new tool for web usability testing. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers 35(2), 194–201 (2003)
WebSort (n.d.) (Retrieved on February 20070 http://www.websort.net/
WebCAT (n.d.) (Retrieved on the 8th of February 2007) http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/overview.html
UzCardsort (n.d.) (Retrieved on the 8th of February 2007) http://uzilla.mozdev.org/cardsort.html
Harper, M.E, Jentsch, F.G, Berry, D., Lau, H.C, Bowers, C., Salas, E.: TPL–KATS-card sort: A tool for assessing structural knowledge. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers 35(4), 577–584 (2003)
Carmel, E., Crawford, S., Chen, H.: Browsing in hypertext: a cognitive study. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man. and Cybernetics 22(5), 865–884 (1992)
Richter, T., Naumann, J., Noller, S.: LOGPAT: A semi-automatic way to analyze hypertext navigation behavior. Swiss Journal of Psychology 62(2), 113–120 (2003)
Brunstein, A., Naumann, A., Krems, J.F.: The Chemnitz LogAnalyzer: A Tool for Analyzing Data From Hypertext Navigation Research. Behavior Research Methods 37(2), 232–239 (2005)
Smith, P.A.: Towards a practical measure of hypertext usability. Interacting with Computers 8, 365–381 (1996)
McEneaney, J.E.: Graphical and numerical methods to access navigation in hypertext. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 6(5), 761–786 (2001)
Cañas, J.J., Antolí, A., Barquier, P., Castillo, A., Fajardo, I., Gámez, P., Salmerón, L.: Representación mental de los conceptos, objetos y personas implicados en una tarea realizada en una interfaz. Inteligencia Artificial 16, 107–113 (2002)
Foltz, P.W., Kintsch, W., Landauer, T.K.: The measurement of textual coherence with Latent Semantic Analysis. Discourse Processes 25, 285–307 (1998)
Arrue, M., Fajardo, I., López, J.M., Vigo, M.: Interdependence between technical web accessibility and usability: its influence on web quality models. International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology 3(3), 307–328 (2007)
Arrue, M., Vigo, M., Abascal, J.: Quantitative metrics for web accessibility evaluation. In: Lowe, D.G., Gaedke, M. (eds.) ICWE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3579, Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
López, J.M., Fajardo, I., Abascal, J. (2007). Towards Remote Empirical Evaluation of Web Pages’ Usability. In: Jacko, J.A. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Design and Usability. HCI 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4550. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73105-4_66
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73105-4_66
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73104-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73105-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)