A paradox has been observed whereby web site usability is proven to be an essential element in a web site, yet at the same time there exist an abundance of web pages with poor usability. This discrepancy is the result of limitations that are currently preventing web developers in the commercial sector from producing usable web sites. In this paper we propose a framework whose objective is to alleviate this problem by automating certain aspects of the usability evaluation process. Mainstreaming comes as a result of automation, therefore enabling a non-expert in the field of usability to conduct the evaluation. This results in reducing the costs associated with such evaluation. Additionally, the framework allows the flexibility of adding, modifying or deleting guidelines without altering the code that references them since the guidelines and the code are two separate components. A comparison of the evaluation results carried out using the framework against published evaluations of web sites carried out by web site usability professionals reveals that the framework is able to automatically identify the majority of usability violations. Due to the consistency with which it evaluates, it identified additional guideline-related violations that were not identified by the human evaluators.
A METHOD FOR WEBSITE USABILITY EVALUATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSISIJwest
ABSTRACT
Graphical user interfaces design in software development process focuses on maximizing usability and the user's experience, in order to make the interaction for users easy, flexible and efficient. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the usability satisfaction degree of a web-based system. The proposed method has been accomplished in two phases and implemented on an airlines website as a case study. In the first phase, a website usability test is implemented by a number of users, and then the results obtained are translated into charts for a final web-based system evaluation in the second phase. The results achieved
were satisfactory, since the places where the weaknesses and gaps in the website are identified and recommended solutions to avoid them are drawn. The authenticity of the results have been confirmed by comparing them with user opinions acquired from a questionnaire, which proves the precision in which the website is rated.
Usability of User Interface Styles for Learning Graphical Software ApplicationsWaqas Tariq
This paper examines usability of different user interface styles for learning graphical software applications, namely Adobe Flash CS4 and Microsoft Expression blend 4. An empirical study was performed to investigate the usability attributes of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction scores for learning the graphical software applications. There were 32 participants recruited whom consist of interface designers and software developers. A set of 7 tasks was designed to compare the different effects of user interface styles including graphical user interface (GUI) and command line interface (CLI). User Performance variables (effectiveness, efficiency, duration, number of errors and number of helps) were measured for tasks performed by all the participants in the test. Satisfaction score was measured using QUIS (Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction) tool. The result revealed that the average effectiveness scores are higher than 75% for both software applications. Although Adobe Flash CS4 gained slightly higher on effectiveness, Microsoft Expression Blend 4 obtained better results in terms of efficiency, duration, errors and helps. The user satisfaction rates also showed Microsoft Expression Blend 4 gained higher satisfaction comparing Adobe Flash CS4. Generally, both software applications gained scores above average (>3.5) for majority of the user interface satisfaction attributes of software regardless of users’ background.
A GUIDELINE FOR AN EFFECTIVE USER INTERFACE FOR EDUCATIONAL SEMANTIC APPLICATIONijma
ABSTRACT
This research aims to produce a guideline for an effective user interface for semantic application particularly educational. In order to develop the guideline, a methodology of four phases; analysis, design, development and evaluation has been applied. Qualitative approach was used by using checklist instrument and interview questions with the experts in system design. A prototype was then developed using the proposed guideline. The prototype was evaluated using qualitative approach based on heuristic evaluation instrument involving a sample of ten teachers of secondary level. The user acceptance for this system was compared to the one which has been developed without the guideline. The result shows that the system developed by the proposed guideline has higher acceptance. Seven of ten teachers agreed that the most important principle in user interface design is effectiveness specifically the simplicity, aesthetic and minimalist design. It is useful to develop an effective user interface using this guideline.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND INTEGRATION TESTING ASPECTS IN WEB BASED APPLICATIONSIJCSEA Journal
Integration testing is one the important phase in software testing life cycle (STLC). With the fast growth of internet and web services, web-based applications are also growing rapidly and their importance and complexity is also increasing. Heterogeneous and diverse nature of distributed components, applications, along with their multi-platform support and cooperativeness make these applications more complex and swiftly increasing in their size. Quality assurance of these applications is becoming more crucial and important. Testing is one of the key processes to achieve and ensure the quality of these software or Webbased products. There are many testing challenges involved in Web-based applications. But most importantly integration is the most critical testing associated with Web-based applications. There are number of challenging factors involved in integration testing efforts. These factors have almost 70 percent to 80 percent impact on overall quality of Web-based applications. In software industry different kind of testing approaches are used by practitioners to solve the issues associated with integration which are due
to ever increasing complexities of Web-based applications.
Study On User Interface(UI) Attributes Of Web Forms For Better User Experienceiosrjce
IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE) is a double blind peer reviewed International Journal that provides rapid publication (within a month) of articles in all areas of computer engineering and its applications. The journal welcomes publications of high quality papers on theoretical developments and practical applications in computer technology. Original research papers, state-of-the-art reviews, and high quality technical notes are invited for publications.
A METHOD FOR WEBSITE USABILITY EVALUATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSISIJwest
ABSTRACT
Graphical user interfaces design in software development process focuses on maximizing usability and the user's experience, in order to make the interaction for users easy, flexible and efficient. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the usability satisfaction degree of a web-based system. The proposed method has been accomplished in two phases and implemented on an airlines website as a case study. In the first phase, a website usability test is implemented by a number of users, and then the results obtained are translated into charts for a final web-based system evaluation in the second phase. The results achieved
were satisfactory, since the places where the weaknesses and gaps in the website are identified and recommended solutions to avoid them are drawn. The authenticity of the results have been confirmed by comparing them with user opinions acquired from a questionnaire, which proves the precision in which the website is rated.
Usability of User Interface Styles for Learning Graphical Software ApplicationsWaqas Tariq
This paper examines usability of different user interface styles for learning graphical software applications, namely Adobe Flash CS4 and Microsoft Expression blend 4. An empirical study was performed to investigate the usability attributes of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction scores for learning the graphical software applications. There were 32 participants recruited whom consist of interface designers and software developers. A set of 7 tasks was designed to compare the different effects of user interface styles including graphical user interface (GUI) and command line interface (CLI). User Performance variables (effectiveness, efficiency, duration, number of errors and number of helps) were measured for tasks performed by all the participants in the test. Satisfaction score was measured using QUIS (Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction) tool. The result revealed that the average effectiveness scores are higher than 75% for both software applications. Although Adobe Flash CS4 gained slightly higher on effectiveness, Microsoft Expression Blend 4 obtained better results in terms of efficiency, duration, errors and helps. The user satisfaction rates also showed Microsoft Expression Blend 4 gained higher satisfaction comparing Adobe Flash CS4. Generally, both software applications gained scores above average (>3.5) for majority of the user interface satisfaction attributes of software regardless of users’ background.
A GUIDELINE FOR AN EFFECTIVE USER INTERFACE FOR EDUCATIONAL SEMANTIC APPLICATIONijma
ABSTRACT
This research aims to produce a guideline for an effective user interface for semantic application particularly educational. In order to develop the guideline, a methodology of four phases; analysis, design, development and evaluation has been applied. Qualitative approach was used by using checklist instrument and interview questions with the experts in system design. A prototype was then developed using the proposed guideline. The prototype was evaluated using qualitative approach based on heuristic evaluation instrument involving a sample of ten teachers of secondary level. The user acceptance for this system was compared to the one which has been developed without the guideline. The result shows that the system developed by the proposed guideline has higher acceptance. Seven of ten teachers agreed that the most important principle in user interface design is effectiveness specifically the simplicity, aesthetic and minimalist design. It is useful to develop an effective user interface using this guideline.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND INTEGRATION TESTING ASPECTS IN WEB BASED APPLICATIONSIJCSEA Journal
Integration testing is one the important phase in software testing life cycle (STLC). With the fast growth of internet and web services, web-based applications are also growing rapidly and their importance and complexity is also increasing. Heterogeneous and diverse nature of distributed components, applications, along with their multi-platform support and cooperativeness make these applications more complex and swiftly increasing in their size. Quality assurance of these applications is becoming more crucial and important. Testing is one of the key processes to achieve and ensure the quality of these software or Webbased products. There are many testing challenges involved in Web-based applications. But most importantly integration is the most critical testing associated with Web-based applications. There are number of challenging factors involved in integration testing efforts. These factors have almost 70 percent to 80 percent impact on overall quality of Web-based applications. In software industry different kind of testing approaches are used by practitioners to solve the issues associated with integration which are due
to ever increasing complexities of Web-based applications.
Study On User Interface(UI) Attributes Of Web Forms For Better User Experienceiosrjce
IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE) is a double blind peer reviewed International Journal that provides rapid publication (within a month) of articles in all areas of computer engineering and its applications. The journal welcomes publications of high quality papers on theoretical developments and practical applications in computer technology. Original research papers, state-of-the-art reviews, and high quality technical notes are invited for publications.
A Proposed Web Accessibility Framework for the Arab DisabledWaqas Tariq
The Web is providing unprecedented access to information and interaction for people with disabilities. This paper presents a Web accessibility framework which offers the ease of the Web accessing for the disabled Arab users and facilitates their lifelong learning as well. The proposed framework system provides the disabled Arab user with an easy means of access using their mother language so they don’t have to overcome the barrier of learning the target-spoken language. This framework is based on analyzing the web page meta-language, extracting its content and reformulating it in a suitable format for the disabled users. The basic objective of this framework is supporting the equal rights of the Arab disabled people for their access to the education and training with non disabled people. Key Words : Arabic Moon code, Arabic Sign Language, Deaf, Deaf-blind, E-learning Interactivity, Moon code, Web accessibility , Web framework , Web System, WWW.
Human Arm Inverse Kinematic Solution Based Geometric Relations and Optimizati...Waqas Tariq
Kinematics for robotic systems with many degrees of freedom (DOF) and high redundancy are still an open issue. Namely, computation time in robotic applications is often too high to reach good solution, for parts of the kinematic chain; the problem of inverse kinematics is not linear, as rotations are involved. This means that analytical solutions are only available in limited situations. In all other cases, alternative methods will have to be an employed.The most-used alternative is numerical solutions optimization. This paper presents a strategy based on combine’s analytical solutions with nonlinear optimization algorithm solutions to solution the IKP. A analytical solutions is used to reduce the size of problem from seven variable of joint angle to single variable and nonlinear optimization algorithm was used to find approximate solution which make the computation time is very small
Principles of Good Screen Design in WebsitesWaqas Tariq
Visual techniques for proper arrangement of the elements on the user screen have helped the designers to make the screen look good and attractive. Several visual techniques emphasize the arrangement and ordering of the screen elements based on particular criteria for best appearance of the screen. This paper investigates few significant visual techniques in various web user interfaces and showcases the results for better understanding and their presence.
Dynamic Construction of Telugu Speech Corpus for Voice Enabled Text EditorWaqas Tariq
In recent decades speech interactive systems have gained increasing importance. Performance of an ASR system mainly depends on the availability of large corpus of speech. The conventional method of building a large vocabulary speech recognizer for any language uses a top-down approach to speech. This approach requires large speech corpus with sentence or phoneme level transcription of the speech utterances. The transcriptions must also include different speech order so that the recognizer can build models for all the sounds present. But, for Telugu language, because of its complex nature, a very large, well annotated speech database is very difficult to build. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to cover all the words of any Indian language, where each word may have thousands and millions of word forms. A significant part of grammar that is handled by syntax in English (and other similar languages) is handled within morphology in Telugu. Phrases including several words (that is, tokens) in English would be mapped on to a single word in Telugu.Telugu language is phonetic in nature in addition to rich in morphology. That is why the speech technology developed for English cannot be applied to Telugu language. This paper highlights the work carried out in an attempt to build a voice enabled text editor with capability of automatic term suggestion. Main claim of the paper is the recognition enhancement process developed by us for suitability of highly inflecting, rich morphological languages. This method results in increased speech recognition accuracy with very much reduction in corpus size. It also adapts Telugu words to the database dynamically, resulting in growth of the corpus.
Camera as Mouse and Keyboard for Handicap Person with Troubleshooting Ability...Waqas Tariq
Camera mouse has been widely used for handicap person to interact with computer. The utmost important of the use of camera mouse is must be able to replace all roles of typical mouse and keyboard. It must be able to provide all mouse click events and keyboard functions (include all shortcut keys) when it is used by handicap person. Also, the use of camera mouse must allow users troubleshooting by themselves. Moreover, it must be able to eliminate neck fatigue effect when it is used during long period. In this paper, we propose camera mouse system with timer as left click event and blinking as right click event. Also, we modify original screen keyboard layout by add two additional buttons (button “drag/ drop” is used to do drag and drop of mouse events and another button is used to call task manager (for troubleshooting)) and change behavior of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, and CAPS LOCK keys in order to provide shortcut keys of keyboard. Also, we develop recovery method which allows users go from camera and then come back again in order to eliminate neck fatigue effect. The experiments which involve several users have been done in our laboratory. The results show that the use of our camera mouse able to allow users do typing, left and right click events, drag and drop events, and troubleshooting without hand. By implement this system, handicap person can use computer more comfortable and reduce the dryness of eyes.
Robot Arm Utilized Having Meal Support System Based on Computer Input by Huma...Waqas Tariq
A robot arm utilized having meal support system based on computer input by human eyes only is proposed. The proposed system is developed for handicap/disabled persons as well as elderly persons and tested with able persons with several shapes and size of eyes under a variety of illumination conditions. The test results with normal persons show the proposed system does work well for selection of the desired foods and for retrieve the foods as appropriate as usersf requirements. It is found that the proposed system is 21% much faster than the manually controlled robotics.
Parameters Optimization for Improving ASR Performance in Adverse Real World N...Waqas Tariq
From the existing research it has been observed that many techniques and methodologies are available for performing every step of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system, but the performance (Minimization of Word Error Recognition-WER and Maximization of Word Accuracy Rate- WAR) of the methodology is not dependent on the only technique applied in that method. The research work indicates that, performance mainly depends on the category of the noise, the level of the noise and the variable size of the window, frame, frame overlap etc is considered in the existing methods. The main aim of the work presented in this paper is to use variable size of parameters like window size, frame size and frame overlap percentage to observe the performance of algorithms for various categories of noise with different levels and also train the system for all size of parameters and category of real world noisy environment to improve the performance of the speech recognition system. This paper presents the results of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and Accuracy test by applying variable size of parameters. It is observed that, it is really very hard to evaluate test results and decide parameter size for ASR performance improvement for its resultant optimization. Hence, this study further suggests the feasible and optimum parameter size using Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) for enhancing resultant accuracy in adverse real world noisy environmental conditions. This work will be helpful to give discriminative training of ubiquitous ASR system for better Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Keywords: ASR Performance, ASR Parameters Optimization, Multi-Environmental Training, Fuzzy Inference System for ASR, ubiquitous ASR system, Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Our research aims to propose a global approach for specification, design and verification of context awareness Human Computer Interface (HCI). This is a Model Based Design approach (MBD). This methodology describes the ubiquitous environment by ontologies. OWL is the standard used for this purpose. The specification and modeling of Human-Computer Interaction are based on Petri nets (PN). This raises the question of representation of Petri nets with XML. We use for this purpose, the standard of modeling PNML. In this paper, we propose an extension of this standard for specification, generation and verification of HCI. This extension is a methodological approach for the construction of PNML with Petri nets. The design principle uses the concept of composition of elementary structures of Petri nets as PNML Modular. The objective is to obtain a valid interface through verification of properties of elementary Petri nets represented with PNML.
Development of Sign Signal Translation System Based on Altera’s FPGA DE2 BoardWaqas Tariq
The main aim of this paper is to build a system that is capable of detecting and recognizing the hand gesture in an image captured by using a camera. The system is built based on Altera’s FPGA DE2 board, which contains a Nios II soft core processor. Image processing techniques and a simple but effective algorithm are implemented to achieve this purpose. Image processing techniques are used to smooth the image in order to ease the subsequent processes in translating the hand sign signal. The algorithm is built for translating the numerical hand sign signal and the result are displayed on the seven segment display. Altera’s Quartus II, SOPC Builder and Nios II EDS software are used to construct the system. By using SOPC Builder, the related components on the DE2 board can be interconnected easily and orderly compared to traditional method that requires lengthy source code and time consuming. Quartus II is used to compile and download the design to the DE2 board. Then, under Nios II EDS, C programming language is used to code the hand sign translation algorithm. Being able to recognize the hand sign signal from images can helps human in controlling a robot and other applications which require only a simple set of instructions provided a CMOS sensor is included in the system.
Collaborative Learning of Organisational KnolwedgeWaqas Tariq
This paper presents recent research into methods used in Australian Indigenous Knowledge sharing and looks at how these can support the creation of suitable collaborative envi- ronments for timely organisational learning. The protocols and practices as used today and in the past by Indigenous communities are presented and discussed in relation to their relevance to a personalised system of knowledge sharing in modern organisational cultures. This research focuses on user models, knowledge acquisition and integration of data for constructivist learning in a networked repository of or- ganisational knowledge. The data collected in the repository is searched to provide collections of up-to-date and relevant material for training in a work environment. The aim is to improve knowledge collection and sharing in a team envi- ronment. This knowledge can then be collated into a story or workflow that represents the present knowledge in the organisation.
Toward a More Robust Usability concept with Perceived Enjoyment in the contex...Waqas Tariq
Mobile multimedia service is relatively new but has quickly dominated people¡¯s lives, especially among young people. To explain this popularity, this study applies and modifies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to propose a research model and conduct an empirical study. The goal of study is to examine the role of Perceived Enjoyment (PE) and what determinants can contribute to PE in the context of using mobile multimedia service. The result indicates that PE is influencing on Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and directly Behavior Intention (BI). Aesthetics and flow are key determinants to explain Perceived Enjoyment (PE) in mobile multimedia usage.
The Use of Java Swing’s Components to Develop a WidgetWaqas Tariq
Widget is a kind of application provides a single service such as a map, news feed, simple clock, battery-life indicators, etc. This kind of interactive software object has been developed to facilitate user interface (UI) design. A user interface (UI) function may be implemented using different widgets with the same function. In this article, we present the widget as a platform that is generally used in various applications, such as in desktop, web browser, and mobile phone. We also describe a visual menu of Java Swing’s components that will be used to establish widget. It will assume that we have successfully compiled and run a program that uses Swing components.
Virtual teams are used more and more by companies and other organizations to receive benefits. They are a great way to enable teamwork in situations where people are not sitting in the same physical place at the same time. As companies seek to increase the use of virtual teams, a need exists to explore the context of these teams, the virtuality of a team and software that may help these teams working virtualy. Virtual teams have the same basic principles as traditional teams, but there is one big difference. This difference is the way the team members communicate. Instead of using the dynamics of in-office face-to-face exchange, they now rely on special communication channels enabled by modern technologies, such as e-mails, faxes, phone calls and teleconferences, virtual meetings etc. This is why this paper is focused on the issues regarding virtual teams, and how these teams are created and progressing in Albania.
Exploring the Relationship Between Mobile Phone and Senior Citizens: A Malays...Waqas Tariq
There is growing ageing phenomena with the rise of ageing population throughout the world. According to the World Health Organization (2002), the growing ageing population indicates 694 million, or 223% is expected for people aged 60 and over, since 1970 and 2025.The growth is especially significant in some advanced countries such as North America, Japan, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and so forth. This growing older adult population has significantly impact the social-culture, lifestyle, healthcare system, economy, infrastructure and government policy of a nation. However, there are limited research studies on the perception and usage of a mobile phone and its service for senior citizens in a developing nation like Malaysia. This paper explores the relationship between mobile phones and senior citizens in Malaysia from the perspective of a developing country. We conducted an exploratory study using contextual interviews with 5 senior citizens of how they perceive their mobile phones. This paper reveals 4 interesting themes from this preliminary study, in addition to the findings of the desirable mobile requirements for local senior citizens with respect of health, safety and communication purposes. The findings of this study bring interesting insight to local telecommunication industries as a whole, and will also serve as groundwork for more in-depth study in the future.
An Improved Approach for Word Ambiguity RemovalWaqas Tariq
Word ambiguity removal is a task of removing ambiguity from a word, i.e. correct sense of word is identified from ambiguous sentences. This paper describes a model that uses Part of Speech tagger and three categories for word sense disambiguation (WSD). Human Computer Interaction is very needful to improve interactions between users and computers. For this, the Supervised and Unsupervised methods are combined. The WSD algorithm is used to find the efficient and accurate sense of a word based on domain information. The accuracy of this work is evaluated with the aim of finding best suitable domain of word. Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, Supervised Training, Unsupervised Learning, Word Ambiguity, Word sense disambiguation
An overview on Advanced Research Works on Brain-Computer InterfaceWaqas Tariq
A brain–computer interface (BCI) is a proficient result in the research field of human- computer synergy, where direct articulation between brain and an external device occurs resulting in augmenting, assisting and repairing human cognitive. Advanced works like generating brain-computer interface switch technologies for intermittent (or asynchronous) control in natural environments or developing brain-computer interface by Fuzzy logic Systems or by implementing wavelet theory to drive its efficacies are still going on and some useful results has also been found out. The requirements to develop this brain machine interface is also growing day by day i.e. like neuropsychological rehabilitation, emotion control, etc. An overview on the control theory and some advanced works on the field of brain machine interface are shown in this paper.
3D Human Hand Posture Reconstruction Using a Single 2D ImageWaqas Tariq
Passive sensing of the 3D geometric posture of the human hand has been studied extensively over the past decade. However, these research efforts have been hampered by the computational complexity caused by inverse kinematics and 3D reconstruction. In this paper, our objective focuses on 3D hand posture estimation based on a single 2D image with aim of robotic applications. We introduce the human hand model with 27 degrees of freedom (DOFs) and analyze some of its constraints to reduce the DOFs without any significant degradation of performance. A novel algorithm to estimate the 3D hand posture from eight 2D projected feature points is proposed. Experimental results using real images confirm that our algorithm gives good estimates of the 3D hand pose. Keywords: 3D hand posture estimation; Model-based approach; Gesture recognition; human- computer interface; machine vision.
Cognitive Approach Towards the Maintenance of Web-Sites Through Quality Evalu...Waqas Tariq
It is a well established fact that the Web-Applications require frequent maintenance because of cutting– edge business competitions. The authors have worked on quality evaluation of web-site of Indian ecommerce domain. As a result of that work they have made a quality-wise ranking of these sites. According to their work and also the survey done by various other groups Futurebazaar web-site is considered to be one of the best Indian e-shopping sites. In this research paper the authors are assessing the maintenance of the same site by incorporating the problems incurred during this evaluation. This exercise gives a real world maintainability problem of web-sites. This work will give a clear picture of all the quality metrics which are directly or indirectly related with the maintainability of the web-site.
Computer Input with Human Eyes-Only Using Two Purkinje Images Which Works in ...Waqas Tariq
A method for computer input with human eyes-only using two Purkinje images which works in a real time basis without calibration is proposed. Experimental results shows that cornea curvature can be estimated by using two light sources derived Purkinje images so that no calibration for reducing person-to-person difference of cornea curvature. It is found that the proposed system allows usersf movements of 30 degrees in roll direction and 15 degrees in pitch direction utilizing detected face attitude which is derived from the face plane consisting three feature points on the face, two eyes and nose or mouth. Also it is found that the proposed system does work in a real time basis.
Inverse Kinematics Analysis for Manipulator Robot with Wrist Offset Based On ...Waqas Tariq
This paper presents an algorithm to solve the inverse kinematics for a six degree of freedom (6 DOF) manipulator robot with wrist offset. This type of robot has a complex inverse kinematics, which needs a long time for such calculation. The proposed algorithm starts from find the wrist point by vectors computation then compute the first three joint angles and after that compute the wrist angles by analytic solution. This algorithm is tested for the TQ MA2000 manipulator robot as case study. The obtained results was compared with results of rotational vector algorithm where both algorithms have the same accuracy but the proposed algorithm saving round about 99.6% of the computation time required by the rotational vector algorithm, which leads to used this algorithm in real time robot control.
THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE was innovatively created by Google engineers and it is ready for production in record time. The success of Google is to attributed the efficient search algorithm, and also to the underlying commodity hardware. As Google run number of application then Google’s goal became to build a vast storage network out of inexpensive commodity hardware. So Google create its own file system, named as THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE that is GFS. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is one of the largest file system in operation. Generally THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is a scalable distributed file system of large distributed data intensive apps. In the design phase of THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE, in which the given stress includes component failures , files are huge and files are mutated by appending data. The entire file system is organized hierarchically in directories and identified by pathnames. The architecture comprises of multiple chunk servers, multiple clients and a single master. Files are divided into chunks, and that is the key design parameter. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE also uses leases and mutation order in their design to achieve atomicity and consistency. As of there fault tolerance, THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is highly available, replicas of chunk servers and master exists.
User Experience Evaluation for Automation Tools: An Industrial ExperienceIJCI JOURNAL
Evaluating the User Experience in some contexts is challenging, especially in automation applications, due to specific situations and requirements. This paper presents an experience of applying the UX evaluation method for an automation tool in the Android software industry to assist software engineers in identifying the UX problems faced by users. The work applies heuristic evaluation, survey, and user interview methods to find the UX problems, understand the respective reasons, validate the given information, and finally assess the UX. The evaluation identified critical problems related to error messages, system response to errors, and proper feedback about what software is doing. The found problems and discussions contributed to developing new UX evaluation methodologies.
A Proposed Web Accessibility Framework for the Arab DisabledWaqas Tariq
The Web is providing unprecedented access to information and interaction for people with disabilities. This paper presents a Web accessibility framework which offers the ease of the Web accessing for the disabled Arab users and facilitates their lifelong learning as well. The proposed framework system provides the disabled Arab user with an easy means of access using their mother language so they don’t have to overcome the barrier of learning the target-spoken language. This framework is based on analyzing the web page meta-language, extracting its content and reformulating it in a suitable format for the disabled users. The basic objective of this framework is supporting the equal rights of the Arab disabled people for their access to the education and training with non disabled people. Key Words : Arabic Moon code, Arabic Sign Language, Deaf, Deaf-blind, E-learning Interactivity, Moon code, Web accessibility , Web framework , Web System, WWW.
Human Arm Inverse Kinematic Solution Based Geometric Relations and Optimizati...Waqas Tariq
Kinematics for robotic systems with many degrees of freedom (DOF) and high redundancy are still an open issue. Namely, computation time in robotic applications is often too high to reach good solution, for parts of the kinematic chain; the problem of inverse kinematics is not linear, as rotations are involved. This means that analytical solutions are only available in limited situations. In all other cases, alternative methods will have to be an employed.The most-used alternative is numerical solutions optimization. This paper presents a strategy based on combine’s analytical solutions with nonlinear optimization algorithm solutions to solution the IKP. A analytical solutions is used to reduce the size of problem from seven variable of joint angle to single variable and nonlinear optimization algorithm was used to find approximate solution which make the computation time is very small
Principles of Good Screen Design in WebsitesWaqas Tariq
Visual techniques for proper arrangement of the elements on the user screen have helped the designers to make the screen look good and attractive. Several visual techniques emphasize the arrangement and ordering of the screen elements based on particular criteria for best appearance of the screen. This paper investigates few significant visual techniques in various web user interfaces and showcases the results for better understanding and their presence.
Dynamic Construction of Telugu Speech Corpus for Voice Enabled Text EditorWaqas Tariq
In recent decades speech interactive systems have gained increasing importance. Performance of an ASR system mainly depends on the availability of large corpus of speech. The conventional method of building a large vocabulary speech recognizer for any language uses a top-down approach to speech. This approach requires large speech corpus with sentence or phoneme level transcription of the speech utterances. The transcriptions must also include different speech order so that the recognizer can build models for all the sounds present. But, for Telugu language, because of its complex nature, a very large, well annotated speech database is very difficult to build. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to cover all the words of any Indian language, where each word may have thousands and millions of word forms. A significant part of grammar that is handled by syntax in English (and other similar languages) is handled within morphology in Telugu. Phrases including several words (that is, tokens) in English would be mapped on to a single word in Telugu.Telugu language is phonetic in nature in addition to rich in morphology. That is why the speech technology developed for English cannot be applied to Telugu language. This paper highlights the work carried out in an attempt to build a voice enabled text editor with capability of automatic term suggestion. Main claim of the paper is the recognition enhancement process developed by us for suitability of highly inflecting, rich morphological languages. This method results in increased speech recognition accuracy with very much reduction in corpus size. It also adapts Telugu words to the database dynamically, resulting in growth of the corpus.
Camera as Mouse and Keyboard for Handicap Person with Troubleshooting Ability...Waqas Tariq
Camera mouse has been widely used for handicap person to interact with computer. The utmost important of the use of camera mouse is must be able to replace all roles of typical mouse and keyboard. It must be able to provide all mouse click events and keyboard functions (include all shortcut keys) when it is used by handicap person. Also, the use of camera mouse must allow users troubleshooting by themselves. Moreover, it must be able to eliminate neck fatigue effect when it is used during long period. In this paper, we propose camera mouse system with timer as left click event and blinking as right click event. Also, we modify original screen keyboard layout by add two additional buttons (button “drag/ drop” is used to do drag and drop of mouse events and another button is used to call task manager (for troubleshooting)) and change behavior of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, and CAPS LOCK keys in order to provide shortcut keys of keyboard. Also, we develop recovery method which allows users go from camera and then come back again in order to eliminate neck fatigue effect. The experiments which involve several users have been done in our laboratory. The results show that the use of our camera mouse able to allow users do typing, left and right click events, drag and drop events, and troubleshooting without hand. By implement this system, handicap person can use computer more comfortable and reduce the dryness of eyes.
Robot Arm Utilized Having Meal Support System Based on Computer Input by Huma...Waqas Tariq
A robot arm utilized having meal support system based on computer input by human eyes only is proposed. The proposed system is developed for handicap/disabled persons as well as elderly persons and tested with able persons with several shapes and size of eyes under a variety of illumination conditions. The test results with normal persons show the proposed system does work well for selection of the desired foods and for retrieve the foods as appropriate as usersf requirements. It is found that the proposed system is 21% much faster than the manually controlled robotics.
Parameters Optimization for Improving ASR Performance in Adverse Real World N...Waqas Tariq
From the existing research it has been observed that many techniques and methodologies are available for performing every step of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system, but the performance (Minimization of Word Error Recognition-WER and Maximization of Word Accuracy Rate- WAR) of the methodology is not dependent on the only technique applied in that method. The research work indicates that, performance mainly depends on the category of the noise, the level of the noise and the variable size of the window, frame, frame overlap etc is considered in the existing methods. The main aim of the work presented in this paper is to use variable size of parameters like window size, frame size and frame overlap percentage to observe the performance of algorithms for various categories of noise with different levels and also train the system for all size of parameters and category of real world noisy environment to improve the performance of the speech recognition system. This paper presents the results of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and Accuracy test by applying variable size of parameters. It is observed that, it is really very hard to evaluate test results and decide parameter size for ASR performance improvement for its resultant optimization. Hence, this study further suggests the feasible and optimum parameter size using Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) for enhancing resultant accuracy in adverse real world noisy environmental conditions. This work will be helpful to give discriminative training of ubiquitous ASR system for better Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Keywords: ASR Performance, ASR Parameters Optimization, Multi-Environmental Training, Fuzzy Inference System for ASR, ubiquitous ASR system, Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Our research aims to propose a global approach for specification, design and verification of context awareness Human Computer Interface (HCI). This is a Model Based Design approach (MBD). This methodology describes the ubiquitous environment by ontologies. OWL is the standard used for this purpose. The specification and modeling of Human-Computer Interaction are based on Petri nets (PN). This raises the question of representation of Petri nets with XML. We use for this purpose, the standard of modeling PNML. In this paper, we propose an extension of this standard for specification, generation and verification of HCI. This extension is a methodological approach for the construction of PNML with Petri nets. The design principle uses the concept of composition of elementary structures of Petri nets as PNML Modular. The objective is to obtain a valid interface through verification of properties of elementary Petri nets represented with PNML.
Development of Sign Signal Translation System Based on Altera’s FPGA DE2 BoardWaqas Tariq
The main aim of this paper is to build a system that is capable of detecting and recognizing the hand gesture in an image captured by using a camera. The system is built based on Altera’s FPGA DE2 board, which contains a Nios II soft core processor. Image processing techniques and a simple but effective algorithm are implemented to achieve this purpose. Image processing techniques are used to smooth the image in order to ease the subsequent processes in translating the hand sign signal. The algorithm is built for translating the numerical hand sign signal and the result are displayed on the seven segment display. Altera’s Quartus II, SOPC Builder and Nios II EDS software are used to construct the system. By using SOPC Builder, the related components on the DE2 board can be interconnected easily and orderly compared to traditional method that requires lengthy source code and time consuming. Quartus II is used to compile and download the design to the DE2 board. Then, under Nios II EDS, C programming language is used to code the hand sign translation algorithm. Being able to recognize the hand sign signal from images can helps human in controlling a robot and other applications which require only a simple set of instructions provided a CMOS sensor is included in the system.
Collaborative Learning of Organisational KnolwedgeWaqas Tariq
This paper presents recent research into methods used in Australian Indigenous Knowledge sharing and looks at how these can support the creation of suitable collaborative envi- ronments for timely organisational learning. The protocols and practices as used today and in the past by Indigenous communities are presented and discussed in relation to their relevance to a personalised system of knowledge sharing in modern organisational cultures. This research focuses on user models, knowledge acquisition and integration of data for constructivist learning in a networked repository of or- ganisational knowledge. The data collected in the repository is searched to provide collections of up-to-date and relevant material for training in a work environment. The aim is to improve knowledge collection and sharing in a team envi- ronment. This knowledge can then be collated into a story or workflow that represents the present knowledge in the organisation.
Toward a More Robust Usability concept with Perceived Enjoyment in the contex...Waqas Tariq
Mobile multimedia service is relatively new but has quickly dominated people¡¯s lives, especially among young people. To explain this popularity, this study applies and modifies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to propose a research model and conduct an empirical study. The goal of study is to examine the role of Perceived Enjoyment (PE) and what determinants can contribute to PE in the context of using mobile multimedia service. The result indicates that PE is influencing on Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and directly Behavior Intention (BI). Aesthetics and flow are key determinants to explain Perceived Enjoyment (PE) in mobile multimedia usage.
The Use of Java Swing’s Components to Develop a WidgetWaqas Tariq
Widget is a kind of application provides a single service such as a map, news feed, simple clock, battery-life indicators, etc. This kind of interactive software object has been developed to facilitate user interface (UI) design. A user interface (UI) function may be implemented using different widgets with the same function. In this article, we present the widget as a platform that is generally used in various applications, such as in desktop, web browser, and mobile phone. We also describe a visual menu of Java Swing’s components that will be used to establish widget. It will assume that we have successfully compiled and run a program that uses Swing components.
Virtual teams are used more and more by companies and other organizations to receive benefits. They are a great way to enable teamwork in situations where people are not sitting in the same physical place at the same time. As companies seek to increase the use of virtual teams, a need exists to explore the context of these teams, the virtuality of a team and software that may help these teams working virtualy. Virtual teams have the same basic principles as traditional teams, but there is one big difference. This difference is the way the team members communicate. Instead of using the dynamics of in-office face-to-face exchange, they now rely on special communication channels enabled by modern technologies, such as e-mails, faxes, phone calls and teleconferences, virtual meetings etc. This is why this paper is focused on the issues regarding virtual teams, and how these teams are created and progressing in Albania.
Exploring the Relationship Between Mobile Phone and Senior Citizens: A Malays...Waqas Tariq
There is growing ageing phenomena with the rise of ageing population throughout the world. According to the World Health Organization (2002), the growing ageing population indicates 694 million, or 223% is expected for people aged 60 and over, since 1970 and 2025.The growth is especially significant in some advanced countries such as North America, Japan, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and so forth. This growing older adult population has significantly impact the social-culture, lifestyle, healthcare system, economy, infrastructure and government policy of a nation. However, there are limited research studies on the perception and usage of a mobile phone and its service for senior citizens in a developing nation like Malaysia. This paper explores the relationship between mobile phones and senior citizens in Malaysia from the perspective of a developing country. We conducted an exploratory study using contextual interviews with 5 senior citizens of how they perceive their mobile phones. This paper reveals 4 interesting themes from this preliminary study, in addition to the findings of the desirable mobile requirements for local senior citizens with respect of health, safety and communication purposes. The findings of this study bring interesting insight to local telecommunication industries as a whole, and will also serve as groundwork for more in-depth study in the future.
An Improved Approach for Word Ambiguity RemovalWaqas Tariq
Word ambiguity removal is a task of removing ambiguity from a word, i.e. correct sense of word is identified from ambiguous sentences. This paper describes a model that uses Part of Speech tagger and three categories for word sense disambiguation (WSD). Human Computer Interaction is very needful to improve interactions between users and computers. For this, the Supervised and Unsupervised methods are combined. The WSD algorithm is used to find the efficient and accurate sense of a word based on domain information. The accuracy of this work is evaluated with the aim of finding best suitable domain of word. Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, Supervised Training, Unsupervised Learning, Word Ambiguity, Word sense disambiguation
An overview on Advanced Research Works on Brain-Computer InterfaceWaqas Tariq
A brain–computer interface (BCI) is a proficient result in the research field of human- computer synergy, where direct articulation between brain and an external device occurs resulting in augmenting, assisting and repairing human cognitive. Advanced works like generating brain-computer interface switch technologies for intermittent (or asynchronous) control in natural environments or developing brain-computer interface by Fuzzy logic Systems or by implementing wavelet theory to drive its efficacies are still going on and some useful results has also been found out. The requirements to develop this brain machine interface is also growing day by day i.e. like neuropsychological rehabilitation, emotion control, etc. An overview on the control theory and some advanced works on the field of brain machine interface are shown in this paper.
3D Human Hand Posture Reconstruction Using a Single 2D ImageWaqas Tariq
Passive sensing of the 3D geometric posture of the human hand has been studied extensively over the past decade. However, these research efforts have been hampered by the computational complexity caused by inverse kinematics and 3D reconstruction. In this paper, our objective focuses on 3D hand posture estimation based on a single 2D image with aim of robotic applications. We introduce the human hand model with 27 degrees of freedom (DOFs) and analyze some of its constraints to reduce the DOFs without any significant degradation of performance. A novel algorithm to estimate the 3D hand posture from eight 2D projected feature points is proposed. Experimental results using real images confirm that our algorithm gives good estimates of the 3D hand pose. Keywords: 3D hand posture estimation; Model-based approach; Gesture recognition; human- computer interface; machine vision.
Cognitive Approach Towards the Maintenance of Web-Sites Through Quality Evalu...Waqas Tariq
It is a well established fact that the Web-Applications require frequent maintenance because of cutting– edge business competitions. The authors have worked on quality evaluation of web-site of Indian ecommerce domain. As a result of that work they have made a quality-wise ranking of these sites. According to their work and also the survey done by various other groups Futurebazaar web-site is considered to be one of the best Indian e-shopping sites. In this research paper the authors are assessing the maintenance of the same site by incorporating the problems incurred during this evaluation. This exercise gives a real world maintainability problem of web-sites. This work will give a clear picture of all the quality metrics which are directly or indirectly related with the maintainability of the web-site.
Computer Input with Human Eyes-Only Using Two Purkinje Images Which Works in ...Waqas Tariq
A method for computer input with human eyes-only using two Purkinje images which works in a real time basis without calibration is proposed. Experimental results shows that cornea curvature can be estimated by using two light sources derived Purkinje images so that no calibration for reducing person-to-person difference of cornea curvature. It is found that the proposed system allows usersf movements of 30 degrees in roll direction and 15 degrees in pitch direction utilizing detected face attitude which is derived from the face plane consisting three feature points on the face, two eyes and nose or mouth. Also it is found that the proposed system does work in a real time basis.
Inverse Kinematics Analysis for Manipulator Robot with Wrist Offset Based On ...Waqas Tariq
This paper presents an algorithm to solve the inverse kinematics for a six degree of freedom (6 DOF) manipulator robot with wrist offset. This type of robot has a complex inverse kinematics, which needs a long time for such calculation. The proposed algorithm starts from find the wrist point by vectors computation then compute the first three joint angles and after that compute the wrist angles by analytic solution. This algorithm is tested for the TQ MA2000 manipulator robot as case study. The obtained results was compared with results of rotational vector algorithm where both algorithms have the same accuracy but the proposed algorithm saving round about 99.6% of the computation time required by the rotational vector algorithm, which leads to used this algorithm in real time robot control.
THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE was innovatively created by Google engineers and it is ready for production in record time. The success of Google is to attributed the efficient search algorithm, and also to the underlying commodity hardware. As Google run number of application then Google’s goal became to build a vast storage network out of inexpensive commodity hardware. So Google create its own file system, named as THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE that is GFS. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is one of the largest file system in operation. Generally THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is a scalable distributed file system of large distributed data intensive apps. In the design phase of THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE, in which the given stress includes component failures , files are huge and files are mutated by appending data. The entire file system is organized hierarchically in directories and identified by pathnames. The architecture comprises of multiple chunk servers, multiple clients and a single master. Files are divided into chunks, and that is the key design parameter. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE also uses leases and mutation order in their design to achieve atomicity and consistency. As of there fault tolerance, THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is highly available, replicas of chunk servers and master exists.
User Experience Evaluation for Automation Tools: An Industrial ExperienceIJCI JOURNAL
Evaluating the User Experience in some contexts is challenging, especially in automation applications, due to specific situations and requirements. This paper presents an experience of applying the UX evaluation method for an automation tool in the Android software industry to assist software engineers in identifying the UX problems faced by users. The work applies heuristic evaluation, survey, and user interview methods to find the UX problems, understand the respective reasons, validate the given information, and finally assess the UX. The evaluation identified critical problems related to error messages, system response to errors, and proper feedback about what software is doing. The found problems and discussions contributed to developing new UX evaluation methodologies.
THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCEvivatechijri
THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE was innovatively created by Google engineers and it is ready for production in record time. The success of Google is to attributed the efficient search algorithm, and also to the underlying commodity hardware. As Google run number of application then Google’s goal became to build a vast storage network out of inexpensive commodity hardware. So Google create its own file system, named as THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE that is GFS. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is one of the largest file system in operation. Generally THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is a scalable distributed file system of large distributed data intensive apps. In the design phase of THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE, in which the given stress includes component failures , files are huge and files are mutated by appending data. The entire file system is organized hierarchically in directories and identified by pathnames. The architecture comprises of multiple chunk servers, multiple clients and a single master. Files are divided into chunks, and that is the key design parameter. THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE also uses leases and mutation order in their design to achieve atomicity and consistency. As of there fault tolerance, THE USABILITY METRICS FOR USER EXPERIENCE is highly available, replicas of chunk servers and master exists.
Generating a Domain Specific Inspection Evaluation Method through an Adaptive...Waqas Tariq
The growth of the Internet and related technologies has enabled the development of a new breed of dynamic websites and applications that are growing rapidly in use and that have had a great impact on many businesses. These websites need to be continuously evaluated and monitored to measure their efficiency and effectiveness, to assess user satisfaction, and ultimately to improve their quality. Nearly all the studies have used Heuristic Evaluation (HE) and User Testing (UT) methodologies, which have become the accepted methods for the usability evaluation of User Interface Design (UID); however, the former is general, and unlikely to encompass all usability attributes for all website domains. The latter is expensive, time consuming and misses consistency problems. To address this need, new evaluation method is developed using traditional evaluations (HE and UT) in novel ways.
The lack of a methodological framework that can be used to generate a domain-specific evaluation method, which can then be used to improve the usability assessment process for a product in any chosen domain, represents a missing area in usability testing. This paper proposes an adapting framework and evaluates it by generating an evaluation method for assessing and improving the usability of a product, called Domain Specific Inspection (DSI), and then analysing it empirically by applying it on the educational domain. Our experiments show that the adaptive framework is able to build a formative and summative evaluation method that provides optimal results with regard to the identification of comprehensive usability problem areas and relevant usability evaluation method (UEM) metrics, with minimum input in terms of the cost and time usually spent on employing UEMs.
Human computer interaction (HCI) is concerned with the practice of usability, which is a measure that evaluates the simplicity of using a system, software, or interface design for performing particular tasks. Evaluation is a process by which designers gather information about a systems usability to improve its user interfaces features. This research presents a study of a usability evaluation of EduGate, an online academic portal of King Saud University. In this research the heuristic evaluation method was chosen to evaluate the usability of the EduGate. Our results show that, the EduGate suffers from certain usability problem and some recommendations were proposed to enhance the usability of the EduGate. A questionnaire was then used to collect the feedback of real users (i.e. students) on the value of these recommendations. The participants supported 80% of the proposed recommendations to improve the usability of the EduGate.
A HEURISTIC-BASED APPROACH FOR USABILITY EVALUATION OF ACADEMIC PORTALSijcsit
Human computer interaction (HCI) is concerned with the practice of usability, which is a measure that evaluates the simplicity of using a system, software, or interface design for performing particular tasks. Evaluation is a process by which designers gather information about a systems usability to improve its user interfaces features. This research presents a study of a usability evaluation of EduGate, an online academic portal of King Saud University. In this research the heuristic evaluation method was chosen to evaluate the usability of the EduGate. Our results show that, the EduGate suffers from certain usability problem and some recommendations were proposed to enhance the usability of the EduGate. A questionnaire was then used to collect the feedback of real users (i.e. students) on the value of these recommendations. The participants supported 80% of the proposed recommendations to improve the usability of the EduGate.
Human computer interaction (HCI) is concerned with the practice of usability, which is a measure that
evaluates the simplicity of using a system, software, or interface design for performing particular tasks.
Evaluation is a process by which designers gather information about a systems usability to improve its user
interfaces features. This research presents a study of a usability evaluation of EduGate, an online
academic portal of King Saud University. In this research the heuristic evaluation method was chosen to
evaluate the usability of the EduGate. Our results show that, the EduGate suffers from certain usability
problem and some recommendations were proposed to enhance the usability of the EduGate. A
questionnaire was then used to collect the feedback of real users (i.e. students) on the value of these
recommendations. The participants supported 80% of the proposed recommendations to improve the
usability of the EduGate.
Interface on Usability Testing Indonesia Official Tourism WebsiteWaqas Tariq
Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy of The Republic of Indonesia must meet the wide audience various needs and should reach people from all levels of society around the world to provide Indonesia tourism and travel information. This article will gives the details in the evolution of one important component of Indonesia Official Tourism Website as it has grown in functionality and usefulness over several years of use by a live, unrestricted community. We chose this website to see the website interface design and usability and to popularize Indonesia tourism and travel highlights. The analysis done by looking at the criteria specified for usability testing. Usability testing measures are the ease of use (effectiveness, efficiency, consistency and interface design), easy to learn, errors and syntax which is related to the human computer interaction. The purpose of this article is to test the usability level of the website, analyze the website interface design, and provide suggestions for improvements in Indonesia Official Tourism Website of analysis we have done before.
Assessing web site usability measurementeSAT Journals
Abstract Web evaluation has been used in decade to validate the web site to see how it performs. When analysing a web site, typical factors to be considered are the way the information is organized and presented, and how to access and navigate the informative structure [1]. Usability evaluations evaluate the ease of use of a web site functions and see either the user can perform their tasks efficiently. This paper review existing usability standards and models in determining an appropriate model for evaluating the usability of web site. Previous research are reviewed and comparison and analysis of existing usability model and identification of usability criteria and characteristics for web site is made to identify the attribute or characteristic that should be used in evaluating web site.This study proposed an extension of the QUIM model as a basic model for usability model for a web site. Therefore, a set of guidelines to assist in determining design and usability Keywords: web site usability, usability model, usability attributes, QUIM model.
IJRET : International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology is an international peer reviewed, online journal published by eSAT Publishing House for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technology. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in the fields of Engineering and Technology. We bring together Scientists, Academician, Field Engineers, Scholars and Students of related fields of Engineering and Technology.
Usability testing is an accepted process from the domain of user experience (UX) to gauge how easy to learn or use a product is. Users are asked to work on typical scenarios or tasks on the product with the goal of trying to identify challenges in the design of the user interface, interaction or content. In this paper I will discuss the benefits of usability testing in conjunction with accessibility testing and how they can work together. In particular, I will review some recent usability testing projects where we had people with disabilities participate and demonstrate how these findings can augment and support accessibility testing efforts.
TOWARDS UNIVERSAL RATING OF ONLINE MULTIMEDIA CONTENTcscpconf
Most website classification systems have dealt with the question of classifying websites based on
their content, design, usability, layout and such, few have considered website classification
based on users’ experience. The growth of online marketing and advertisement has lead to
fierce competition that has resulted in some websites using disguise ways so as to attract users.
This may result in cases where a user visits a website and does not get the promised results. The
results are a waste of time, energy and sometimes even money for users. In this context, we design
an experiment that uses fuzzy linguistic model and data mining techniques to capture users’
experiences, we then use the k-means clustering algorithm to cluster websites based on a set of
feature vectors from the users’ perspective. The content unity is defined as the distance between
the real content and its keywords. We demonstrate the use of bisecting k-means algorithm for
this task and demonstrate that the method can incrementally learn from user’s profile on their
experience with these websites.
This paper is about usability of technology available in our lives. How easy it is to use the instruments available to us, how easily are we able to do tasks by using the gadgets available to us. It discusses the benefits of usability and discusses how to improve usability. This paper also has comparisons of the websites of two technology giants, Apple and Samsung. It discusses about each and every aspect of their sites and provides reviews about the ease of usability and the user experience. This paper also discusses the ways to make web more usable and the tools to make it more user friendly and easy to use.
Best Practices for Improving User Interface Designijseajournal
A rich and effective computational system must have a friendly user interface with appealing usability features that provides excellent user experience. In order to develop interactive systems with the best user experience, an innovative iterative approach to user interface engineering is required because it is one of the most challenging areas given the diversity of knowledge, ideas, skills and creativity needed for building smart interfaces in order to succeed in today’s rapidly paced and tough, competitive marketplace. Many modeling aspects including analytical, intuitive, artistic, technical, graphical, mathematical, psychological and programming models need to be considered in the development process of an effective user interface. This research examines some of the past practices and recommends a set of guidelines for designing effective user interfaces. It also demonstrates how UML use case diagrams can be enhanced by relating user interface elements to use cases.
BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING USER INTERFACE DESIGN ijseajournal
A rich and effective computational system must have a friendly user interface with appealing usability features that provides excellent user experience. In order to develop interactive systems with the best user experience, an innovative iterative approach to user interface engineering is required because it is one of the most challenging areas given the diversity of knowledge, ideas, skills and creativity needed for building smart interfaces in order to succeed in today’s rapidly paced and tough, competitive marketplace. Many modeling aspects including analytical, intuitive, artistic, technical, graphical, mathematical, psychological and programming models need to be considered in the development process of an effective user interface. This research examines some of the past practices and recommends a set of guidelines for designing effective user interfaces. It also demonstrates how UML use case diagrams can be enhanced by relating user interface elements to use cases.
Nowadays, computers and internet are playing the major role in the development of business and different aspects of human lives; hence, the quality of user-computer interface became an important issue. User interface (UI) can become an Achilles heel in a well-functioning system; due to the fact that most users judge the quality of a product by its usability. The UI layout design improves the usability of a product and accordingly may determine its success; so, due to this and more, the need of an objective way of evaluation of UI has arisen. This paper discusses various UI usability evaluation techniques and shows the recent developments in this field.
TOWARDS UNIVERSAL RATING OF ONLINE MULTIMEDIA CONTENTcsandit
Most website classification systems have dealt with the question of classifying websites based on
their content, design, usability, layout and such, few have considered website classification
based on users’ experience. The growth of online marketing and advertisement has lead to
fierce competition that has resulted in some websites using disguise ways so as to attract users.
This may result in cases where a user visits a website and does not get the promised results. The
results are a waste of time, energy and sometimes even money for users. In this context, we design
an experiment that uses fuzzy linguistic model and data mining techniques to capture users’
experiences, we then use the k-means clustering algorithm to cluster websites based on a set of
feature vectors from the users’ perspective. The content unity is defined as the distance between
the real content and its keywords. We demonstrate the use of bisecting k-means algorithm for
this task and demonstrate that the method can incrementally learn from user’s profile on their
experience with these websites.
Acceptance of a website is determined by various factors, one of the most important is the organization that allows users to access to functions, resources and information that it contains. This work consisted of a study of comparative usability between a website designed using principles of linguistics and design of ontologies and other using a strategy of a commercial product. A plan was designed and applied to evaluate the following aspects of website: ease of use, efficiency to access its information, efficacy to perform tasks and user satisfaction. Heuristic and user tests were used as diagnostic tools in usability evaluations, and an observation guide was made by an external evaluator as a complement to previous tests. The results clearly shown that is better use the proposed website design methodology. This allows to create site more structured, functional and with greater ease of access to resources that it contain.
Similar to USEFul: A Framework to Mainstream Web Site Usability through Automated Evaluation (20)
Real Time Blinking Detection Based on Gabor FilterWaqas Tariq
New method of blinking detection is proposed. The utmost important of blinking detections method is robust against different users, noise, and also change of eye shape. In this paper, we propose blinking detections method by measuring of distance between two arcs of eye (upper part and lower part). We detect eye arcs by apply Gabor filter onto eye image. As we know that Gabor filter has advantage on image processing application since it able to extract spatial localized spectral features, such line, arch, and other shape are more easily detected. After two of eye arcs are detected, we measure the distance between both by using connected labeling method. The open eye is marked by the distance between two arcs is more than threshold and otherwise, the closed eye is marked by the distance less than threshold. The experiment result shows that our proposed method robust enough against different users, noise, and eye shape changes with perfectly accuracy.
Monitoring and Visualisation Approach for Collaboration Production Line Envir...Waqas Tariq
In this paper, a tool, called SPMonitor, to monitor and visualize of run-time execution productive processes is proposed. SPMonitor enables dynamically visualizing and monitoring workflows running in a system. It displays versatile information about currently executed workflows providing better understanding about processes and the general functionality of the domain. Moreover, SPMonitor enhances cooperation between different stakeholders by offering extensive communication and problem solving features that allow actors concerned to react more efficiently to different anomalies that may occur during a workflow execution. The ideas discussed are validated through the study of real case related to airbus assembly lines.
Hand Segmentation Techniques to Hand Gesture Recognition for Natural Human Co...Waqas Tariq
This work is the part of vision based hand gesture recognition system for Natural Human Computer Interface. Hand tracking and segmentation are the primary steps for any hand gesture recognition system. The aim of this paper is to develop robust and efficient hand segmentation algorithm where three algorithms for hand segmentation using different color spaces with required morphological processing have were utilized. Hand tracking and segmentation algorithm (HTS) is found to be most efficient to handle the challenges of vision based system such as skin color detection, complex background removal and variable lighting condition. Noise may contain, sometime, in the segmented image due to dynamic background. An edge traversal algorithm was developed and applied on the segmented hand contour for removal of unwanted background noise.
Vision Based Gesture Recognition Using Neural Networks Approaches: A ReviewWaqas Tariq
The aim of gesture recognition researches is to create system that easily identifies gestures, and use them for device control, or convey in formations. In this paper we are discussing researches done in the area of hand gesture recognition based on Artificial Neural Networks approaches. Several hand gesture recognition researches that use Neural Networks are discussed in this paper, comparisons between these methods were presented, advantages and drawbacks of the discussed methods also included, and implementation tools for each method were presented as well.
Evaluation of Web Search Engines Based on Ranking of Results and FeaturesWaqas Tariq
Search engines help the user to surf the web. Due to the vast number of web pages it is highly impossible for the user to retrieve the appropriate web page he needs. Thus, Web search ranking algorithms play an important role in ranking web pages so that the user could retrieve the page which is most relevant to the user's query. This paper presents a study of the applicability of two user-effort-sensitive evaluation measures on five Web search engines (Google, Ask, Yahoo, AOL and Bing). Twenty queries were collected from the list of most hit queries in the last year from various search engines and based upon that search engines are evaluated.
A Case Study on Non-Visual Pen-Based Interaction with the Numerical DataWaqas Tariq
A widespread tabular format still poses great problems for screen readers because of diversity and complexity of the cells’ content. How to access the numerical data presented in tabular form in a quick and intuitive way in the absence of visual feedback? We have implemented and assessed the algorithm supporting an exploration of the tabular data in the absence of visual feedback. This algorithm helps to solve the most commonly encountered problems: retrieving the position of extreme values and the target value that can also be linked to the specific content of the virtual table. The performance of 11 blindfolded subjects was evaluated when they used the StickGrip kinesthetic display and when they relied on the Wacom pen and auditory signals. The results of the comparative study are reported.
AudiNect: An Aid for the Autonomous Navigation of Visually Impaired People, B...Waqas Tariq
In this paper, the realization of a new kind of autonomous navigation aid is presented. The prototype, called AudiNect, is mainly developed as an aid for visually impaired people, though a larger range of applications is also possible. The AudiNect prototype is based on the Kinect device for Xbox 360. On the basis of the Kinect output data, proper acoustic feedback is generated, so that useful depth information from 3D frontal scene can be easily developed and acquired. To this purpose, a number of basic problems have been analyzed, in relation to visually impaired people orientation and movement, through both actual experimentations and a careful literature research in the field. Quite satisfactory results have been reached and discussed, on the basis of proper tests on blindfolded sighted individuals.
User Centered Design Patterns and Related Issues – A ReviewWaqas Tariq
A design pattern describes possible good solutions to common problems within certain context. This is done by describing the invariant qualities of all those solutions where good patterns improve with time and widespread use. In this research paper some existing user centered design patterns and their issues are discussed. We have studied many user centered design patterns; however most of them do not provide diagrammatic solutions which can be implementable. It is observed that there is a need of a design pattern which can address issues specifically related to Open Source Software (OSS) users.
Identifying the Factors Affecting Users’ Adoption of Social NetworkingWaqas Tariq
Through the rapid expansion of information and communication technologies, social networking sites have received much more attention in the scope of internet communication. Success of a social web primarily depends on users’ satisfaction. In this context, this study aims to identify the influencing factors that affect users’ satisfaction towards social networking site use. A multidimensional model has been proposed based on the Information Quality, System Quality, Environmental and Affective dimensions to assess the effects of key variables – Semantic Intention, Usability, Web-Page Aesthetics, Subjective Norm and Trust- on users’ satisfaction. Facebook was chosen as a focused social networking site, because of its popularity. A comprehensive survey instrument was applied to 203 Facebook users. Also, Structural Equation Modeling, particularly Partial Least Square, was conducted to analyze the proposed research model. As a result, proposed multidimensional research model predicts the factors influencing users’ satisfaction towards social networking site use and relationships among these factors. The findings of this research will be valuable for literature by analyzing the influencing factors that have not been previously researched in the context of social networking satisfaction area.
Operation “Blue Star” is the only event in the history of Independent India where the state went into war with its own people. Even after about 40 years it is not clear if it was culmination of states anger over people of the region, a political game of power or start of dictatorial chapter in the democratic setup.
The people of Punjab felt alienated from main stream due to denial of their just demands during a long democratic struggle since independence. As it happen all over the word, it led to militant struggle with great loss of lives of military, police and civilian personnel. Killing of Indira Gandhi and massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other India cities was also associated with this movement.
Students, digital devices and success - Andreas Schleicher - 27 May 2024..pptxEduSkills OECD
Andreas Schleicher presents at the OECD webinar ‘Digital devices in schools: detrimental distraction or secret to success?’ on 27 May 2024. The presentation was based on findings from PISA 2022 results and the webinar helped launch the PISA in Focus ‘Managing screen time: How to protect and equip students against distraction’ https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/managing-screen-time_7c225af4-en and the OECD Education Policy Perspective ‘Students, digital devices and success’ can be found here - https://oe.cd/il/5yV
Palestine last event orientationfvgnh .pptxRaedMohamed3
An EFL lesson about the current events in Palestine. It is intended to be for intermediate students who wish to increase their listening skills through a short lesson in power point.
How to Split Bills in the Odoo 17 POS ModuleCeline George
Bills have a main role in point of sale procedure. It will help to track sales, handling payments and giving receipts to customers. Bill splitting also has an important role in POS. For example, If some friends come together for dinner and if they want to divide the bill then it is possible by POS bill splitting. This slide will show how to split bills in odoo 17 POS.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
We all have good and bad thoughts from time to time and situation to situation. We are bombarded daily with spiraling thoughts(both negative and positive) creating all-consuming feel , making us difficult to manage with associated suffering. Good thoughts are like our Mob Signal (Positive thought) amidst noise(negative thought) in the atmosphere. Negative thoughts like noise outweigh positive thoughts. These thoughts often create unwanted confusion, trouble, stress and frustration in our mind as well as chaos in our physical world. Negative thoughts are also known as “distorted thinking”.
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
Ethnobotany and Ethnopharmacology:
Ethnobotany in herbal drug evaluation,
Impact of Ethnobotany in traditional medicine,
New development in herbals,
Bio-prospecting tools for drug discovery,
Role of Ethnopharmacology in drug evaluation,
Reverse Pharmacology.
Basic phrases for greeting and assisting costumers
USEFul: A Framework to Mainstream Web Site Usability through Automated Evaluation
1. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 10
USEFul: A Framework to Mainstream Web Site Usability
Through Automated Evaluation
Alexiei Dingli alexiei.dingli@um.edu.mt
Intelligent Computer Systems
University of Malta
Msida, MSD 2080, Malta
Justin Mifsud justinmifsud@gmail.com
Computing & Information Systems
Goldsmiths University of London
London, SE14 6NW, England, UK
Abstract
A paradox has been observed whereby web site usability is proven to be an essential element in
a web site, yet at the same time there exist an abundance of web pages with poor usability. This
discrepancy is the result of limitations that are currently preventing web developers in the
commercial sector from producing usable web sites. In this paper we propose a framework whose
objective is to alleviate this problem by automating certain aspects of the usability evaluation
process. Mainstreaming comes as a result of automation, therefore enabling a non-expert in the
field of usability to conduct the evaluation. This results in reducing the costs associated with such
evaluation. Additionally, the framework allows the flexibility of adding, modifying or deleting
guidelines without altering the code that references them since the guidelines and the code are
two separate components. A comparison of the evaluation results carried out using the
framework against published evaluations of web sites carried out by web site usability
professionals reveals that the framework is able to automatically identify the majority of usability
violations. Due to the consistency with which it evaluates, it identified additional guideline-related
violations that were not identified by the human evaluators.
Keywords: Usability, Automated Usability Evaluation, Usability Guidelines, Usability Problems.
1. INTRODUCTION
The International Standards Organization's ISO9241 standard, defines usability as the
"effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in
particular environments" [1].
Whilst there exists a general agreement about the importance of web site usability, especially
within the technical communication professional and the academic communities [2, 3, 4], it is
given less priority in the commercial sector [3]. In fact, even in its early years, it was noted that
on average, the web sites on the World Wide Web were of a poor quality [5, 6, 7, 8].
Problems related to poor usability and accessibility in software and web sites, also prompted
some countries to also have their own guidelines and legislation for usability and accessibility of
web sites [9, 10]. Additionally, there is less accord about what constitutes usability [2] particularly
because some argue that usability is perceived in different ways by different users based on their
characteristics such as age, gender, education level, technology skills and culture [11, 12].
Thus, it can be observed that a paradox exists whereby web site usability is proven to be an
essential element in a web site, the absence of which confuses users and results in loss of
revenue [13, 14] and at the same time it is not commonly applied with the commercial sector. The
main question that this study aims to address is “How can web site usability be automated and as
2. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 11
a result mainstreamed?”- meaning how can an automated tool be developed that can make it
easier and more possible for more web designers and developers to produce usable web sites.
2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Current limitations that Prevent Web Site Usability from Going Mainstream
Usability Evaluation (UE) is the process of measuring usability and recognizing explicit usability
problems [15]. Its main goal is to identify the main issues in the user interface that may lead to
human error, terminate the user interaction with the system and cause user frustration [16].
Although there exist a number of widely accepted usability evaluation techniques such as
Heuristic Evaluation [17], Cognitive Walkthrough [18], Think aloud testing and Query techniques
[15, 19], the development of usable web sites is not common because of the following limitations:
• Usability evaluation requires the engagement of experts to conduct it, and there is a
shortage of such experts [20, 21, 13, 22].
• The process of conducting usability evaluation is expensive and some companies do not
have the finance to afford it [23, 24].
• Conducting usability evaluation and improvement of web sites is becoming increasingly
difficult because of the number of web sites being developed, their size and the regularity
at which they are updated [25].
• Time is an issue since the web site life cycle is fast due to market pressure and absence
of distribution barriers [5]. So as to meet such demanding deadlines, evaluation many be
overlooked, thus resulting in less usable web sites.
• Tobar et al. [24] state that all forms of quality measurement of a web site such as
usability evaluation can only be carried out up to a limited depth.
• Studies also show inconsistencies in the reported usability violations when the same
web sites were evaluated by different usability experts [26, 20, 27, 28].
2.2 How Automation Helps in Mainstreaming Web Site Usability
In this study, automation is being chosen as the primary method to mainstream web site usability.
This is because our proposed framework is based on research carried out by Beirekdar et al. [20],
Ivory and Hearst [29] and Brajnik [5] who identify automated usability evaluation as a viable
approach that can overcome the limitations of its manual counterpart. Since most of the
advantages of automating web site usability that they propose actually overcome the current
limitations, outlined in Section 2.1 of this document, then automation has been chosen as the
technique to mainstream web site usability. This is because they state that automated web site
evaluation:
• Reduces the costs of usability evaluation: Through automation, the evaluation can be
done more quickly and hence more cheaply.
• Reduces or eliminates the need for usability experts to carry out the usability
evaluation: The use of such a tool will be of assistance to designers and developers who
do not have such expert skills in web site usability.
• Overcomes inconsistency in the usability problems that are identified: By removing
the human element, automation removes the inconsistencies in the usability problems
that are detected as well as any misinterpretations and wrong application of usability
guidelines.
• Enables the prediction of the time and costs of errors across a whole design: Since
automated evaluation tools perform usability evaluation methodically, they are more
consistent and cover a wider area in their evaluation and thus, one can better predict the
time and cost required to repair usability errors that are identified
3. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 12
• Increases the coverage of the usability aspects that are evaluated: Automation
overcomes commercial constraints such as those associated with time, cost and
resources, which typically limit the depth of evaluation
• Enables the evaluation between different potential designs: Commercial constraints
limit the evaluation against one design or a group of features. Automated evaluation
software provides designers with an environment where alternative designs can be
evaluated.
• Facilitates the evaluation in various stages of the design process: An interface can
be evaluated and any usability issues identified and resolved early, thus saving time and
costs that would be incurred should it be addressed at a later stage.
• Is of immediate value in the web design and development domain: Brinck and Hofer
[25] state that due to the large number of web designers and developers, a tool that
enables the evaluation of a web site is something that will appeal to this large community.
2.3 Attempts at automating web site usability evaluation
Chi et al [6] state that there are two types of tools that can perform automated usability
evaluation. These categories refer to tools that:
• Make use of conformance to standards
• Try to predict the usage of a web site
Through the research carried out for this study, four tools have been identified that perform the
usability of a web site, all of which fall in the second category. These are Cognitive Walkthrough
of the Web - CWW [30] Web Tango [31], WebCriteria Site Profile [5] and Bloodhound [6]. All three
solutions base their usability evaluation through usage prediction - something which various
researchers such as Groves [32], Winckler et al. [33] and Murray and Costanzo [34] argue
against since this method is based on prediction algorithms that can provide misleading data.
3. MAINSTREAMING WEB SITE USABILITY THROUGH USEFUL
3.1 The Components of the USEFul Framework
The framework that is being proposed in this study has been named USEFul (USability
Evaluation Framework). Unlike the previous attempts at automated usability evaluation, USEFul
falls in the first category proposed by Chi et al [6].
This is because it is based on research conducted by Jeffries et al. [21], Otaiza et al. [19] and
Tobar et al. [24], who identify Heuristic Evaluation, that is, the evaluation of the interface with
respect to a set of usability principles [35] as the usability evaluation technique that manages to
detect the majority of global usability issues, from all the usability evaluation techniques that they
evaluated. Similarly, studies by Comber [7], Ivory and Hearst [29] and Tobar et al. [24], show that
adherence to guidelines can effectively contribute towards making a web site more usable.
Thus, the USEFul framework will reference web site usability guidelines and use them to
automatically assess the usability of a web site that is being evaluated.
4. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 13
FIGURE 1: A visual representation of the USEFul framework (Source: Authors)
The different components of the USEFul framework as illustrated in Figure 1 are the:
• User - the person who is conducting the usability evaluation of a web site
• Web site - the means by which the user can interact with the USEFul framework. To
specify which web site needs to be evaluated, the user needs to key in the web site's
name, its tag line and URL.
• Web service - The web service communicates with the library by calling the execute
function from the library and passes it the parameters that it needs to evaluate the web
site. Once the evaluation is complete, the web service passes the results of the
evaluation back to the web site.
• Library - The library contains the program that carries out the evaluation. In order to
carry out the evaluation, it retrieves the data from the database.
• Database - The database is an SQL relational database that contains 4 tables
o Usability Category table - stores the usability categories available (Section 3.1)
o Implementation Level table - stores the implementation levels available (Section
3.2)
o Guidelines Definitions table - stores the guidelines that will be used in the
framework, expressed in natural language. This table also stores the Priority Rating
(Section 3.2) of each guideline and references the usability and implementation level
tables.
o Rule Type 1 table - In this table, the guidelines from the guidelines definitions table
that have green or amber implementation level (Section 3.2) are expressed in a form
that the library can interpret to carry out the evaluation. For each record, the fields
contain the HTML tag along with its additional data such as its attribute and size that
the library needs to search for so as to find the pattern that identifies a specific
guideline. The rule type 1 table also allows the comparison or searching of two
HTML tags or tags within tags. An important column in this table is the "ruleSuccess"
column as the fields in it store a value that the library interprets as the conditions
under which the guideline is considered to have been violated or not. This is
important since it distinguishes between guidelines that must be adhered to and thus
must be present in the web site and those that must never be found or can only be
found once as otherwise they would cause a usability violation.
At this point, it is worth mentioning that the current build of the USEFul framework
contains just 1 rule type (Rule type 1 table), that enables the library to identify the
guidelines that relate to HTML tags or CSS selectors. It is envisaged that future builds will
5. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 14
enable the addition of new rule types such as ones that enable the library to evaluate
usability guidelines related to images and other resources used by the web site. Also,
should new structuring tools such as a JavaScript parser be incorporated into the
framework, then these would require new rule types to be incorporated.
3.2 The Set of Guidelines That Will be Used by the USEFul Framework
Over the years, a number of usability guidelines have been published such as those by Smith and
Mosier [36], Norman [37], Nielsen [38], Comber [7], Sano [39], Borges et al. [27], Spool et al. [40],
Fleming [41], Rosenfeld and Morville [42], Shneiderman [43], Nielsen [44], Dix et. al. [15] and
Nielsen and Loranger [45].
However, the problem with Usability guidelines is that there is no set of guidelines that has been
established as a standard [15]. Thus, a set of 240 guidelines has been compiled for this study
from the results of usability studies carried out by researchers and experts in the fields of
cognitive psychology, technical communication, computer science, human factors and usability.
Since most of the proposed guidelines have been retrieved from the U.S Department of Health
and Human Services' (HHS) Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines [46], the same
categorization has been used, that is, each guideline was placed in 1 of the 15 categories shown
in Table 1
TABLE 1: The number of guidelines used by the USEFul framework in each category (Source: Authors)
3.3 Assigning the Priority Rating and Level of Implementation to each Guideline
Each guideline used in the USEFul framework has been assigned an Implementation Level
which denotes the ability (or otherwise) to translate that guideline into a form which can then be
referenced by the program. This gives an indication as to what automation level each guideline
has. The parameters that will be used for this classification are as shown in Table 2:
Usability Category Number of Guidelines
Optimizing the user experience 29
Hardware and software 4
The homepage 12
Page layout 9
Navigation 27
Scrolling and paging 3
Headlines, titles and labels 18
Links 21
Text appearance 18
Lists 13
Screen based controls (widgets) 27
Graphics, images and multimedia 17
Writing web content 18
Content organization 8
Search 16
Total Guidelines 240
6. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 15
TABLE 2: How the guidelines should be interpreted in terms of their Implementation Level (Source: Authors)
Since the resources to tackle usability violations are typically scarce, the evaluator carrying out
manual usability evaluation prioritizes them so that the violations that cause the highest problems
are addressed first [47, 45].
One of the most used prioritization techniques is the severity scale, whereby each guideline is
given a severity rating [48]. For this project a severity scale called Priority Rating (PR) is
proposed, whereby each guideline is assigned a PR from 1 to 5 where a guideline with PR 5 is
very important in terms of its contribution towards making a web site usable, whilst a guideline
with PR 1 provides minor contribution. This prioritizes the list of usability violations identified by
the program.
3.4 Incorporating the Guidelines into the SQL Database
Usability guidelines are occasionally abstract and difficult to interpret and apply [26, 20, 27, 28,
49]. This has been addressed in the USEFul framework through the use of the guidelines
definitions and rule type 1 tables (Section 3.1). The process through which a guideline is entered
into these 2 tables is illustrated below through the use of one of guideline#81 which is one of the
guidelines used in the USEFul framework:
3.4.1 Guideline Expressed in Natural language
Guideline#81: URLs should not be complex and should ideally be less than 50 characters. This is
beneficial for both usability and SEO [45]
3.4.2 Guideline as Entered in the Guidelines Definitions Table
When the guideline is entered in the guidelines definition table, its primary key is 81. The
guideline and its explanation have been split into the fields under the "Guideline" and "Reason"
columns respectively. The value in the field "ruleType" is 1 since this guideline needs to be
evaluated using the rule type 1 rule. The guideline is a green guideline, hence the value 1 under
the "ruleCat" column and its Priority Rating is 5, hence the reason why there is a "5" under the
Implementation
Level Category
Interpretation
Green • Guideline can be fully implemented in the database within the USEFul
framework.
• The framework is able to automatically determine whether this guideline applies
to the web site being evaluated.
• The results returned by the framework when referring to this guideline are
conclusive since these types of guidelines are typically measurable, with clearly
defined parameters.
Amber • Guideline is harder to fully implement in the USEFul framework.
• Certain patterns that automatically identify if this guideline may apply to the web
site being evaluated have been implemented in the database.
• This guideline can be converted into a "green" guideline by incorporating within
the USEFul framework additional Artificial Intelligence algorithms.
• The results outputted by the framework when referring to this guideline consist
of data that can assist the human evaluator in checking whether it applies to the
web site being evaluated
Red • This guideline is typically abstract and requires user intervention or very
advanced algorithms from the field of Artificial Intelligence or additional
technology to make it possible for it to be implemented in the framework.
• Through the use of advanced algorithms or technology, it can be converted into
"amber" or "green" guideline
• In its current build, the framework lists this guideline so that the human
evaluator can manually check if it applies to the web site being evaluated
7. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 16
ruleSeverity column. Since this guideline belongs to the "navigation" usability category, the value
"5" has been entered in the field under the ruleGroup column.
TABLE 3: How guideline#81 is represented in the guidelines definition table (Source: Authors)
3.4.1 Guideline as Entered in the Rules Type 1 Table
To check whether the guideline is found in the parsed HTML, the execute function needs to
search for the following pattern:
<a href="any text as long as it is less than 70 characters"> .. </a>
Therefore, the guideline is converted to a form that the execute function can understand and this
is stored as a record in the rule type 1 table (Section 3.1) as shown below:
TABLE 4: How guideline#81 is represented in the rules type 1 table (Source: Authors)
Thus, the value "81" is a foreign key that references the primary key "81" in the Guidelines
Definition table. The execute function will look for is the "a" tags which have an "href" attribute as
stated by the contents in the fields under the "tagA" and "attributeA" columns respectively. The
exact content in between the inverted commas of the "href" attribute is irrelevant, hence the
reason for the NULL value in the field under the "valueA" column.
However, for the guideline not to be violated, this content needs to be less than 70 characters
long, as stated by the contents in the fields under the "compareOperator and "sizeA" columns
respectively. Since the guideline is not dependent on any other HTML tags, the fields under the
four tag B columns are all set to NULL. If the guideline matching the pattern in this record is
found, then it is a good thing, hence the reason why the value under the "ruleSuccess" column is
True. Also, for the guideline to succeed, all the content of all "href" attributes within all the "a" tags
found must be less than 70 characters. This is set by the "0" value in the field under the
"mustSucceed" column.
4. HOW THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK EVALUATES WEBSITE USABILITY
This section will describe the process that takes place from when the user accesses the USEFul
web site and keys in the parameters pertaining to the web site they would like to evaluate to when
the results of the usability evaluation are reported on the web site. This description will thus
discuss on a high level the interactions that take place between the various components within
the framework represented in Figure 1.
pk Guideline Reason ruleType ruleCat rule
Severity
rule
Group
81 URLs should
not be
complex
URLs should ideally be
less than 50 characters.
Such URLs are beneficial
for both usability and SEO
1 1 5 5
pk ruleFk tagA attributeA valueA sizeA tagB
12 81 a href NULL 70 NULL
attributeB valueB sizeB rule
Command
compare
Operator
rule
Success
must
Succeed
NULL NULL NULL NULL < True 0
8. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 17
4.1 Step 1 - The user passes the data to the web site
This step refers to when the user states what web site the USEFul framework will need to
evaluate. They do this by filling in the text fields pertaining to the web site's name, URL and
(optionally) the tag line. The website's GUI can be seen in the screenshot below (Figure 2)
FIGURE 2: Screenshot of the USEFul web site (Source: Authors)
4.2 Step 2 - The Web Site Passes the Data to the Web Service
When the user fills in the data in Step 1 and presses the "Evaluate Web Site" button, the web site
passes the data as parameters to the web service.
4.3 Step 3 - The Web Service Configures the Library
When the web service receives the parameters from the web site, it communicates with the
library and creates a new instance by setting the configuration values in the library according to
these parameters. It is important to note that in reality, the library is actually contained within the
web service. The only reason why the library was illustrated as a component outside the web
service in Figure 1 is to create a distinction between the two components for explanation
purposes. Therefore, the phrase "communicates" is being used to illustrate the flow of data
between the library and the web service.
Thus, the web service sets the path of the web site, the company name and the tag line. The web
service then uses the library's functionalities to load and parse the web site to create parsed
HTML and CSS documents. These parsed documents are stored in the web service in static
variables.
4.4 Step 4 - The Web Service Fetches the Guidelines
The web service communicates with the library which in turn communicates with the SQL
database to fetch the data stored in the guidelines and rule type tables. The returned data is
stored inside the web service in a data table as shown in Table 5 below:
9. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 18
TABLE 5: The Structure of the Data Table stored in the Web Service (Source: Authors)
The components of the data table shown in Table 5 are the following:
• Guideline definition: This contains a copy of the data found in the guidelines definitions
table (Section 3.1)
• Rule type properties: This field contains a copy of the rules type 1 table (Section 3.1)
• Results fields: The results fields are additional fields initially set as empty when the data
table is created in the web service. These fields will eventually contain the results that the
web service will communicate back to the web site after the evaluation is completed.
These are:
o Tags: will contain the number of times the HTML tag or CSS selector found in the
field under the rule type properties column in the data row is found.
o Success: The number of tags or selectors found whose properties match the
properties of the guideline being referenced
o Fail: The number of tags or selectors whose attributes match the properties of
the guideline being referenced but their value or size properties do not match
o Null: The number of tags or selectors whose attributes, sizes or properties do not
match with the property of the guideline
o Success%: This value is the result of the equation Success/(Tags-Null) x 100
o Passed: This field will eventually contain a True/False value that will indicate
whether the guideline has been violated or not
4.5 Step 5 - The Web Service Uses the Library to Evaluate the Web Site
At the end of Step 4, the web service contains a copy of the parsed HTML and CSS documents
which are stored in static variables. It also has a data table as shown in Table 5.
The web service then takes the first data row and calls the execute function from the library. The
execute function takes 1 data row (1 row of the data table as indicated in Table 5) as a
parameter. When the execute function in the library receives the data row from the web service, it
sees what rule it has to work on in order to evaluate whether the usability guideline defined in that
data row is being violated.
We will use guideline#81 as an example to illustrate the steps the library performs to assess
whether the web site being evaluated adheres to a guideline or if it violates it. It is being assumed
that guideline#81 has been entered in both the guidelines definition table and the rules table as
indicated in Tables 3 and 4 respectively.
When the web service passes calls the execute function with the data row pertaining to
guideline#81, each time the execute function is run, and it finds an "a" tag it follows the logic tree
shown in Figure 3 below. As it can be seen in Figure 3, the execute function can take different
paths, depending on what the fields contain and the type of pattern matching that it needs to
perform.
Guideline Definition Rule Type Properties Results Fields
1 data row
10. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 19
FIGURE 3: The Logic Tree for Rule Type 1 (Source: Authors)
At the end of this process, the execute function returns the evaluation result which can have 1 of
3 values: True, False or Null. In the case of guideline#81, these are interpreted as follows:
• True: The "a" tag has an "href" attribute whose content is less than 70 characters
• False: The "a" tag has an "href" attribute whose content is 70 characters or more
• Null: The "a" tag does not have an "href" attribute
Suppose that the execute function finds 3 instances of the "a" tag in the parsed HTML document
and these are as follows:
• True: 2
• False: 1
• Null: 0
For each evaluation result, the execute rule compares it with the value of the field under the
"ruleSuccess" column in Table 4. During the same process, it uses the result of the comparison to
increment the counters of the values that will be written in the results fields of the data table in the
web service. The method of comparison is modeled on the XNOR truth table and can be seen in
Table 6 below:
Get Tag
Execute Function
Get Attribute
Get Value
Get Size
M
M
M
C
Match Attributes
Match Tags
Match Values
Match Sizes
M
C
Check With Numeric
Check With Text
C
Process performed by the execute function
Connector - The logical flow can proceed
from any connecting point
Logical flow followed by the execute function
Legend
11. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 20
TABLE 6: How guideline#81 is represented in the guidelines definition table (Source: Authors)
Thus, assuming that in the case of the guideline#81 example, the sequence in which the
evaluation results are issued by the execute function are 2 True, 1 False and 1 null, then the
execute rule would make the following comparisons:
TABLE 7: The comparisons made by the execute function for the guideline#81example (Source: Authors)
In this way, the values for the results fields of the data row for guideline#81 in the web service
(Table 5) would be as shown in Table 8 below:
TABLE 8: The values in fields of the data row for guideline#81 (Source: Authors)
As can be seen in the table above, at this stage, it has not been determined whether the guideline
has passed or not. In fact, to set this value, the execute function looks up the value of the field
under "mustSucceed" in Table 4 to see under which conditions it can be stated that guideline#81
has not been violated.
Since the value in this case is "0", the execute rule interprets it that for the guideline not to be
violated, this guideline must not fail, meaning that the fail counter in Table 8 should be "0". Since
this is not the case, the execute rule sets the value of the "Passed" field in Table 8 to "FALSE".
This effectively means that the guideline has been violated.
This value is then stored in the passed field of the data row for guideline#81 in the web service.
4.6 Step 6 - The Web Service Sends the Data Table to the Web Ste
Once the data table is complete, the web service sends it to the web site which creates 3 data
views, one for each implementation level. It also sorts the violations in each implementation in
descending order of priority rating and displays them as shown in Figure 4.
Input A (Evaluation Result) Input B (ruleSuccess) Output (A XNOR B)
False: Guideline not found False: Bad guideline True: Increment success counter
False: Guideline not found True: Good guideline False: Increment fail counter
True: Guideline found False: Bas guideline False: Increment fail counter
True: Guideline found True: Good guideline True: Increment success counter
Null: Guideline not applicable True: Good guideline Null: Increment null counter
Null: Guideline not applicable False: Bad guideline Null: Increment null counter
Input A (Evaluation Result) Input B (ruleSuccess) Output (A XNOR B)
True True True: Increment success counter
True True True: Increment success counter
False True False: Increment fail counter
Results Field Value
Tags 3
Success 2
Fail 1
Null 0
Success% 66.7
Passed NULL
12. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 21
FIGURE 4: Screenshot showing evaluation results carried out by the USEFul framework (Source: Authors)
5. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
Since web site usability professionals are scarce (a current limitation mentioned in Section 2.1), it
was decided that the effectiveness of the USEFul framework will be assessed by comparing the
results of the evaluations carried out on web sites against published evaluations of the same web
sites carried out by web site usability professionals.
13. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 22
The most reliable source for this evaluation was identified to be the book "Homepage Usability -
50 Websites Deconstructed" by Nielsen and Tahir [50]. The reasoning behind this chosen method
of experimentation is based on the following points:
Dr. Jakob Nielsen is considered to be a web usability guru [51, 52] and has been hailed
as "one of the world's foremost experts in web usability" [53].
The book itself illustrates in a very clear manner the usability violations that have been
identified by Nielsen and has received numerous positive reviews [54, 55].
Nielsen evaluates the web sites featured in this book by referencing web site usability
guidelines. This usability evaluation technique is the same technique used by the USEFul
framework. This eliminates any possibilities that any difference in the list of identified
violations is as a result of different techniques being employed.
The set of guidelines used by Nielsen for this evaluation is a subset of the HHS
Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines [46]. In fact, this book is listed as
one of the cited sources. As stated in Section 3.2, the majority of the guidelines
implemented in the USEFul framework are from the HHS guidelines.
Although the HHS Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines have been
retrieved in February 2011 and thus it can be assumed that they are still relevant today,
any flaws in these guidelines does not affect the performance of the USEFul framework
since the guidelines are not hard coded into the library itself. Moreover, using the same
set of guidelines as those used by the human evaluator for these tests eliminates the
possibility that any discrepancies in the results were due to different sets of guidelines
being used.
On inspection of the results reported by evaluation carried by Nielsen and Tahir it was noticed
that they also mention some positive usability characteristics. The guidelines that have been
observed which have led to these positive traits have also been incorporated in this experiment.
Since the USEFul framework only reports usability violations, the absence of these guidelines in
the list of detected violations was thus interpreted as a positive result. In this regard, since what
Nielsen and Tahir reported were both positive as well as negative comments, the term "usability
aspects" will be used instead of usability violations so as to avoid the negative connotation
associated with the word "violation".
Due to their expertise in web site usability, Nielsen and Tahir also list a number of positive as well
as negative usability aspects which are specific to the web site being evaluated and their linkage
to any of the guidelines could not be established. These site-specific aspects were incorporated
in this study with the red guidelines since they could not be automatically evaluated by the
USEFul framework in its present form.
Ten web sites from the book were selected on the basis that their evaluation contained less site-
specific recommendations and more green and amber guideline related usability aspects. This
means that from the authors' evaluation, it was easier to identify which guidelines from the HHS
Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines were being violated. Special attention was
taken to select web sites that violated different guidelines so as to increase the set of guidelines
that will be incorporated into the database for evaluation.
So as to ensure that the versions and contents of the web sites evaluated are identical to the
ones evaluated by Nielsen and Tahir, the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine [56] was used.
Using this tool, the exact web sites were loaded by utilizing the dates present on the screenshots
in the book. Based on these criteria, the 10 web sites chosen for this experiment are those found
in Table 9.
14. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 23
.
TABLE 9: The web sites that were used for this experiment (Source: Authors)
So as to be able to identify the usability violations identified by Nielsen and Tahir in these web
sites 62 guidelines (36 Green, 27 Amber and 0 Red / Site-Specific guidelines) from the set of
guidelines mentioned in Section 3.2 were used for this experiment. The results of the evaluations
can be seen side by side in Table 10:
.
TABLE 10: Usability evaluations carried out by Nielsen & Tahir against USEFul (Source: Authors)
As can be seen in the figures presented in the column Results 1 of Table 10, the USEFul
framework was able to correctly identify the guideline-related usability aspects, 95.86% of the
time when compared to Nielsen and Tahir's manual evaluation. When the code was inspected to
identify why there was a 4.14% discrepancy it was found that the main reason why the framework
Web Site Tag Line URL
About The Human Internet http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200106110
62521/http://www.about.com/
Accenture Now It Gets Interesting http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200107111
42024/http://www.accenture.com/
Asia Cuisine Asia's Leading Food and
Beverage Portal
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200107030
30929/http://www.asiacuisine.com.sg/
Barnes & Noble (No Tag Line) http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200102031
220/http://bn.com/
BBC Online Welcome to the UK's Favourite
Website
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200108061
73705/http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Boeing Forever New Frontiers http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200105221
94801/http://www.boeing.com/
DIRECTV America's Leader in Digital
Home Entertainment
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200106290
15718/http://www.directv.com/
FedEx (No Tag Line) http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200105250
31739/http://www.fedex.com/us/
Red Herring The Business of Innovation http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200105152
22459/http://redherring.com/
The Art Institute of
Chicago
(No Tag Line) http://web.archive.org/web/20010630180812/
www.artic.edu/aic/index.html
Web Site Usability aspects identified by
Nielsen and Tahir
Nielsen and Tahir’s usability aspects
identified by USEFul
Green Amber Red Total Results 1:
As a percentage of
implementable
usability guidelines
(Green & Amber)
Results 2:
As a percentage of
total usability
guidelines (Green,
Amber, Red & Site
Specific)
About 7 7 11 25 100.00% 56.00%
Accenture 6 8 13 27 85.71% 44.44%
Asia Cuisine 7 3 11 21 100.00% 47.62%
Barnes & Noble 11 4 13 28 93.33% 50.00%
BBC Online 17 6 15 38 100.00% 60.53%
Boeing 9 3 12 24 100.00% 50.00%
DirectTV 14 1 12 27 86.67% 48.15%
FedEx 10 8 11 29 100.00% 62.07%
Red Herring 9 3 17 29 91.67% 37.93%
The Art Institute of
Chicago
7 5 10 22 100.00% 54.55%
Total 97 48 125 270 Average: 95.86% Average: 51.48%
15. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 24
failed was due to bad coding in the web sites being tested. In fact, the primary cause was the use
of images to represent text instead of using actual text. So as to minimize the impact of this
limitation, most of the guidelines' interpretation in the table also referenced the alt attribute of
images. When the alt attribute was not present, then the USEFul framework was not able to
parse the text represented by those images since it does not currently have Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) facilities. Additionally, this discrepancy can also be attributed to the lack of
proper usage of certain HTML tags such as the use of the <p> tag instead of the <h1>..<h6> tags
for headings.
Since only 53.71% of the usability aspects were directly related to green and amber guidelines, it
can be seen that overall, the number of violations reported by the USEFul framework on average
relates to just 51.48% of the total usability aspects identified by Nielsen and Tahir. This finding
shows why various researchers [6, 57, 29, 58] suggest that any tool that automatically evaluates
a web site cannot replace a human being. In this case, because of their experience and expertise
in web usability, Nielsen and Tahir were able to identify almost as many usability guidelines that
have been classified as red guidelines or site-specific recommendations as those that were
classified as green or amber. In this regard, it is clear that the USEFul framework cannot
implemented without the inclusion of a human evaluator.
An interesting observation in these experiments is that since the USEFul framework checks for
the presence of each guideline in the database, it performs a consistent evaluation and thus it
was able to identify more usability violations in each of the tested web sites. At this point it is
important to note that the term being used is usability violations since the USEFul program can
only report usability violations. The HTML and CSS code was then inspected manually so as to
confirm that these additional usability violations were correct.
When the additional usability violations identified by the USEFul framework are compared to the
total aspects identified by Nielsen and Tahir (manually), it can be noted that the framework was
able to identify on average 128.15% usability violations (Table 11: column Results 3) i.e. 28.15%
more violations than what Nielsen and Tahir actually identified. The total number of additional
violations identified are shown in Table 10.
TABLE 11: Additional usability violations identified by the USEFul framework (Source: Authors)
This means that despite the fact that only 53.71% of the usability attributes identified by Nielsen
and Tahir can be converted into green and amber guidelines, the USEFul framework was still
able to detect 28.15% more usability violations using this limited set of 62 guidelines.
Web site Additional usability violations
detected by USEFul
RESULTS 3:
Total usability aspects detected
by USEFul as a percentage of
total usability aspects identified
by Nielsen & Tahir
Green Amber Total
About 11 9 20 136.00%
Accenture 13 9 22 125.93%
Asia Cuisine 16 15 31 195.24%
Barnes & Noble 13 12 25 139.29%
BBC Online 7 10 17 105.26%
Boeing 9 8 17 120.83%
DirectTV 9 7 16 107.41%
FedEx 9 9 18 124.14%
Red Herring 14 12 26 127.59%
The Art Institute of Chicago 6 9 15 122.73%
Total 107 100 207 Average: 128.15%
16. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 25
Another interesting find in these experiments suggests that through the USEFul framework, a
usability expert is still likely to identify more usability violations. Table 12, which summarizes the
results of all the tests carried out with the 10 web sites, illustrates this point.
TABLE 12: Summary of the results from the experiments
From the results shown in Table 11, Nielsen and Tahir were able to comment on an average of
27 usability aspects per web site (270 ÷ 10). whilst USEFul was able to identify 34.6 usability
aspects (mainly violations) per web site (346 ÷ 10) which translates to 28.15% more usability
violations being detected.
If a usability expert were to make use of the USEFul framework, then they would be able to detect
the green, amber, red and site-specific usability aspects whilst the framework would still report
the additional usability violations. This would mean that using the USEFul framework to evaluate
the 10 web sites above, the expert would have commented on a total of 477 usability aspects
(145 + 125 + 207), that is, an average of 47.7 usability aspects per web site (477 ÷ 10). This can
also be interpreted as an increase of 76.67% in the number of usability aspects that the expert
evaluator can make per web site.
6. LIMITATIONS
As recommended by various researchers [6, 57, 29, 58], the purpose of any tool such as the one
being proposed is to provide assistance to human evaluators. Ivory and Chevalier [57] advise that
such tools should always be used with caution and one should never completely rely on their
results alone. This is because with current technology, it is difficult to develop a tool that can
behave like a human and exhibit human attributes such as common sense [16, 58]. This is
partially addressed in the USEFul framework through the assignment of the Implementation Level
to denote the possible level of automation for each guideline. Still, it was observed that the
USEFul framework was not able to handle Nielsen's site-specific recommendations. Such
recommendations can be made by a human evaluator through the application of logic, experience
and techniques such as grouping guidelines.
Another limitation is the difficulty encountered with incorporating certain guidelines into the rule
types tables in the framework's database, particularly because of their abstract nature. At
present, the only way to incorporate such guidelines into the USEFul framework is to introduce
certain assumptions as recommended by Dix et al. [15] and Vanderdonckt and Beirekdar [59].
Additionally, the proposed guidelines are aimed at evaluating the usability of web sites that have
business goals, meaning that these web sites serve to promote and/or sell products and/or
services either online via the web site itself or through offline channels [45, 46]. Thus, web sites
that do not fall in this category require a different set of guidelines. The framework facilitates this
Item # Usability aspects detected by
Nielsen & Tahir USEFul
1 Number of web sites evaluated 10 10
2 Green and Amber guideline-related
usability aspects detected
145 139
3 Red and Site-Specific usability
aspects detected
125 0
4 Additional usability violations
detected
0 207
Total 270 346
17. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 26
process since it reduces it to incorporating the new guidelines into the database tables without
modifying the code.
7. CONCLUSION
From the results obtained in this evaluation, it can be concluded that the USEFul framework is
very effective at identifying usability aspects that violate usability guidelines. However, bad coding
practices can adversely affect the results obtained. The USEFul framework references each
guideline that has been implemented in its SQL database to see if the web site has violated it. In
the experiments that have been carried out, this factor has enabled it to identify more violations
than the usability experts. However, the framework cannot detect what have been classified as
red or site-specific violations because it lacks the logic, experience and expertise that an expert in
web usability has. In this regard it has been concluded that the framework cannot replace a
human evaluator but should be used to assist an evaluator. In fact, the results indicate that using
the framework, a usability expert is likely to be able to detect more usability violations
Additional research needs to be carried out to make the framework more flexible so as to be able
to implement more abstract guidelines that are currently being classified as having a red
implementation level. Currently, the framework can parse HTML and inline and internal CSS
code. Therefore, further enhancements that are planned include the ability to parse external CSS
stylesheets as well as Javascript parsing since these can considerably affect the way the user
sees the web site when rendered through a web browser. So as to overcome the problems with
analyzing the content of images in web sites, image processing and Optical Character
Recognition algorithms can help in addressing this issue. By implementing these enhancements
as well as other algorithms that may be deemed as beneficial, the framework can truly contribute
towards mainstreaming web site usability.
8. REFERENCES
1. International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) DIS 9242-11, (1998) Available at:
http://www.iso.org
2. P. Paolini. “Hypermedia, the web and usability issues” In IEEE International Conference on
Multimedia Computing and Systems. pp. 9-11 IEEE, 1999
3. M. Swaak, M. De Jong, P. De Vries. “Effects of Information usefulness, visual attractiveness,
and usability on web visitors’ trust and behavioural intentions.” In IEEE International
Professional Communication Conference. P. 1-5. Waikiki, HI, USA, 2009
4. P. Vora. “Designing for the web: a survey”. Interactions. pp. 13-30 (1998)
5. G. Brajnik. “Automatic web usability evaluation: what needs to be done?”. In Proceedings of
the 6th
Conference on Human Factors and the Web, Austin Texas, USA, 2000
6. EH. Chi, A. Rosien, G. Supattanasiri, A. Williams, C. Royer, C. Chow, et al. “The
Bloodhound project: automating discovery of web usability issues using the InfoScent™
simulator” In Proceedings of the ACM CHI 03 Conf.. pp. 505-512. Ft.Lauderdale, FL, USA,
2003
7. T. Comber. “Building usable web pages: an HCI perspective”. In Proceedings of the
Australian Conference on the Web AusWeb'95. pp. 119-124. Ballina, Australia, 1995
8. J. Nielsen. “User interface directions for the web” Communications of the ACM. 1999, pp.65-
18. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 27
72
9. Cabinet Office. (2007) Available at http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-
government/resources/quality-framework.asp [Accessed 9 October 2010]
10. European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in European Union Council Directives.
(1990) Available at: http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1990L0270:20070627:EN:HTML
[Accessed 9 October 2010]
11. SA. Becker, FE. Mottay. “A global perspective on website usability” IEEE Software, Jan/Feb,
18(1): pp.54-61, 2001
12. P. Fraternali, M. Tisi. “Identifying cultural markers for web application design targeted to a
multi-cultural audience” In the 8th International Conference on Web Engineering ICWE'08.
pp. 231-239. Yorktown, NJ, USA, 2008
13. F. Montero, P. Gonzáles, M. Lozano, J. Vanderdonckt. “Quality models for automated
evaluation of web sites usability and accessibility”. In International COST294 Workshop on
User Interface Quality Model. Rome, Italy, 2005
14. R. Ruiz-Rodríguez. “An auxiliary tool for usability and design guidelines validation of web
sites” In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computing - CIC'06. pp.304-
308. Mexico City, Mexico, 2006
15 A.Dix, J. Finlay, GD. Abowd, R. Beale. “Human Computer Interaction” 3rd
Ed. Pearson
Education Ltd. Essex, (2004)
16. K. Norman, E. Panizzi, “Levels of automation and user paricipation in usability testing”
Interacting with Computers, p. 246-264, 2006
17. J. Nielsen, R. Molich. “Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Empowering People. pp. 249-256.
Seattle, Washington, USA, 1990
18. P. Polson, C. Lewis, J. Rieman, C. Wharton. “Cognitive walkthroughs: a method for theory-
based evaluation of user interfaces” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, pp. 741-
773, 1992
19. R. Otaiza, C. Rusu, S. Roncagliolo. “Evaluating the usability of transactional web sites” In
Third International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. pp. 32-37.
Saint Maarten, Netherlands, Antilles, 2010
20. A. Beirekdar, J. Vanderdonckt, M. Noirhomme-Fraiture. “KWARESMI - knowledge-based
web automated evaluation tool with reconfigurable guidelines optimization” In Proceedings
of the 9
th
International Workshop on Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive
Systems DSV-IS. pp. 362-376. 2002
19. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 28
21. R. Jeffries, J. Miller, C. Wharton, KM. Uyeda. “User interface evaluation in the real world: a
comparison of four techniques” In Proceedings of the ACM Computer Human Interaction
CHI'91 Conference. pp.119-124. New Orleans, LA, USA, 1991
22. J. Vanderdonckt, A. Beirekdar, M. Noirhomme-Fraiture. “Automated evaluation of web
usability and accessibility by guideline review”. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 17-
30, 2004
23. A. Beirekdar, J. Vanderdonckt, M. Noirhomme-Fraiture. “A framework and a language for
usability automatic evaluation of web sites by static analysis of HTML source code” In 4th
International Conference on Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces. pp. 337-349. 2002
24. LM. Tobar, PM. Latorre Andrés, E. Lafuente Lapena. “WebA: a tool for the assistance in
design and evaluation of websites”. Journal of Universal Computer Science, pp. 1496-1512,
2008
25. T. Brinck, E. Hofer. “Automatically evaluating the usability of web sites” In Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI'02. pp. 906-907. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA,
2002
26. A. Beirekdar, M. Keita, M. Noirhomme, F. Randolet, J. Vanderdonckt, C. Mariage. “Flexible
reporting for automated usability and accessibility evaluation of web sites” INTERACT, pp.
281-294, 2005
27. JA. Borges, I. Morales, NJ. Rodríguez. “Guidelines for designing usable world wide web
pages” In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems:
common ground. pp. 277-278. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 1996
28. M. Burmester, J. Machate. “Creative design of interactive products and use of usability
guidelines - a contradiction?” In J. Jacko, C. Stephanidis, D. Harris. “Human-computer
interaction: theory and practice", Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., pp. 43-46 (2003)
29. MY. Ivory, MA. Hearst. “The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user
interface” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), pp. 470-516, 2001
30. MH. Blackmon, PG. Polson, M. Kitajima, C. Lewis. “Cognitive walkthrough for the web” In
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems: Changing
our World, Changing Ourselves. pp. 463-470. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 2002
31. MY. Ivory. “Web TANGO: towards automated comparison of information-centric web site
designs” In Proceedings of the ACM CHI 00 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, Student Posters. pp. 329-330. 2000
32. K. Groves. “The limitations of server log files for usability analysis” (2007) Available at:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/the-limitations-of [Accessed 22 January 2011]
33. M. Winckler, C. Freitas, J. Lima. “Usability remote evaluation for the WWW” In Proceedings
of the CHI'00 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 131-132
20. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 29
34. G. Murray, T. Costanzo. “Usability and the web: an overview” Information Technology
Services, #61 National Library of Canada, Network Notes (ISSN 1201-4338)
35. J. Nielsen. “Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics” In Proceedings of the
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: celebrating
interdependence. pp. 152-158. Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1994
36. SL. Smith, JN. Mosier. “Guidelines for designing user interface software” Mitre Corporation,
Report No.: MTR-9240 (1986)
37. DA. Norman. “The design of everyday things”, Doubleday (a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing). (1988)
38. J. Nielsen. “The usability engineering life cycle” Computer (IEEE): 12-22, 1992
39. D. Sano. “Designing large-scale web sites: a visual design methodology” Wiley Computer
Publishing, John Wiley & Sons Inc. (1996)
40. JM. Spool, T. Scanlon, C. Snyder, T. DeAngelo. “Web site usability: a designer's guide”,
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. (1998)
41. J. Fleming. “Web navigation: designing the user experience”, O'Reilly & Associates, (1998)
42. L. Rosenfeld, P. Morville. “Information architecture for the world wide web”, O'Reilly &
Associates, (1998)
43. B. Shneiderman. “Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer
interaction”, 3
rd
Ed. Addison-Wesley, (1998)
44. J. Nielsen. “Designing web usability: the practice of simplicity”, New Riders Publishing,
(1999)
45. J. Nielsen, H. Loranger. “Prioritizing web usability”, New Riders Press, (2006)
46. U.S. Department of Health and Human Sciences in Research-Based Web Design &
Usability Guidelines (2006) Available at:
http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/guidelines_book.pdf [Accessed 31 October 2010]
47. M. Hertzum. “Problem prioritization in usability evaluation: from severity assessments toward
impact on design” International Journal Human Computer Interaction, 21(2): pp. 125-146,
2006
48. G. Sim, JC. Read. “The damage index: an aggregation tool for usability problem
prioritisation” In Proceedings of HCI 2010. Dundee, Scotland, 2010
49. J. Ratner, EM. Grosse, C. Forsythe. “Characterization and assessment of HTML style
guides” In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems:
common ground. pp. 115-116. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 1996
21. Alexiei Dingli & Justin Mifsud
International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (IJHCI), Volume (2) : Issue (1) : 2011 30
50. J. Nielsen, M. Tahir. “Homepage Usability - 50 Websites Deconstructed”, New Riders,
(2002)
51. M. Richtel. (1998) from The New York Times: Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/cyber/articles/13usability.html [Accessed 27
January 2011]
52. P. Marks. (2001) from CNN: Available at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/23/web.usability/index.html [Accessed
on 27 January 2011]
53. J. Hamilton. (2000) from Businessweek: Available at:
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708076.htm [Accessed on 27 January 2011]
54. M. Miller. (2002) from PC Mag: Available at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1165443,00.asp [Accessed on 27 January 2011]
55. L. Thomason. (2002) from NetMechanic: Available at
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol5/review_no21.htm [Accessed on 27 January 2011]
56. Internet Archive. Available at http://www.archive.org/ [Accessed on 10 January 2011]
57. MY. Ivory, A. Chevalier. “A study of automated web site evaluation tools” Technical Report
(Report No.: UW-CSE-02-10-01), 2002
58. T. Tiedtke, C. Märtin, N. Gerth. “AWUSA - a tool for automated website usability analysis” In
Pre-Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Design, Specification, and Verification
of Interactive System DSV-IS'2002. pp. 251-266. 2002
59. J. Vanderdonckt, A. Beirekdar. “Automated web evaluation by guideline review” Journal of
Web Engineering, pp. 102-117, 2005