The World Wide Web (WWW) has now become one of the main sources of information on academic and research activities. Therefore, it is an excellent platform to evaluate usability issues. Usability of websites is taking on an increasingly important role for people trying to communicate or conduct transactions with others. Web usability is one of the important factors that measure the success of a web site of any type. It is related to the design aspects of web pages that make sense to people who use them. It does not only allow surfers to navigate easily and conveniently but also helps them to find the information wanted within a particular web site.
The university website is usually the gateway for anybody who seeks information about the university online.
Developing a website should be passed through several design guidelines to ensure that the website can achieve the purposes and goals intended to be accomplished. Additionally, an organization's website is a gateway to its information, products and services. As such, it should ideally be a reflection of the needs of the clients it serves.
Unfortunately, website design and development is often driven by technology or by organizational structure or business objectives, rather than by user needs. However, in recent years website owners and developers have gradually begun to acknowledge and address the issue of usability (Pierce, 2005).
Usability measures the quality of user's experience when he interacts with a product or system. Either Web site, software applications, mobile technology, or any user-operated device. As defined by ISO 9241-11, it is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use (Jokela, & Iivari & Matero & Karukka, 2003). And also, as pointed out Nielsen (2002), it is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. According to Nielson (2002), Usability is defined by five quality components as follows:
Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?.
Many web designers don't take into account how important it is to make each site as usable as possible. Although content and aesthetics are important, if the usability of the site is poor then the site is in need of improvement. The usability of website can be evaluated by several tests such as the load time and search time, navigation, structure and layout, content, visuals, learn ability, non-HTML features, browser compatibility, and subject observation (Smith & Rougier & Hamman & McKenzi & Johnston & Maylath, 2001). The usability of any website can be evaluated and determined using usability evaluation methods and techniques. Generally, any website should meet the needs of its various stakeholders (Thompson & Hourclé & Ma , 2005).
1.2 Why Usability is Important?
According to Usability definition by Expert Nielsen (2002), On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a web site is difficult to use or the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave, and also if users get lost on a web site or a web site's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a web site manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other web sites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty. Research by User Interface Engineering, Inc., shows that people cannot find the information which they seek on the web sites about 60% of the time. This can lead to wasted time, reduced productivity, increased frustration, and loss of repeat visits.
A usable site greatly improves users' satisfaction, ability to learn and remember the site content and organization; it reduces errors, and leads to more effective and efficient user activity.
Usability is not the only important aspect of the site, but content, functionality, and a website's popularity contribute even more to the success of a site. However, if users can do the same thing with two different sites, they will choose the one that is more effective, efficient, and satisfactory.
1.3 Review of Websites Usability Evaluation Methods
To test the usability of website, several methods have been proposed to evaluate the usability of websites in order to improve the design of websites. Some methods are addressed by experts (Inception methods), and the others are directed toward users (Test methods). The following section explained these methods in details.
1.3.1 Usability Inception Method
The Inception Method is a set of methods for identifying usability problems and improving the usability of an interface design by checking it against established standards. These methods include several methods which are as follows:
Heuristic Evaluation Method is a usability inspection technique originated by Nielsen in which a small set of expert evaluators, guided by a set of usability principles known as heuristics, determine whether a system conforms to these and identify specific usability problems in the system. It is described as fast, inexpensive, and easy to perform, and can result in major improvements to user interfaces. Heuristic Evaluation is often done during development, but can be very effective when used on real, operational systems (Nielsen, 1992).
Cognitive Walkthrough is an inspection method that involves one or a group of evaluators inspecting a user interface by going through a set of tasks to evaluate website understandability and ease of learning (Polson & Lewis & Rieman & Wharton, 1992).
Formal usability inspection is a review by the interface designer and his or her peers of users' potential task performance. The goal is to identify the maximum number of defects in the interface as efficiently as possible. The review process includes task performance models and heuristics, a variety of human-factors expertise, and defect detection (Kahn and Prail, 1994).
1.3.2 Usability Test Methods
Testing by end users is the most fundamental usability method. This method provides direct information about how people use systems and their exact problems with a specific interface. Testing method includes several methods among them the following:
Thinking aloud (THA) may be the single most valuable usability engineering method. It involves having an end user continuously thinking out loud while using the system. By verbalizing their thoughts, the test users enable us to understand how they view the system, which makes it easier to identify the end users' major misconceptions. By showing how users interpret each individual interface item, THA facilitates a direct understanding of which parts of the dialogue cause the most problems (Nielsen, 1994).
Field Observation is the simplest of all methods. It involves visiting one or more users in their workplaces. Notes must be taken as unobtrusively as possible to avoid interfering with their work. Noise and disturbance can also lead to false results. Ideally, the observer should be virtually invisible to ensure normal working conditions. Sometimes video is used to make the observation process less obtrusive, but it is rarely necessary.
Observation focuses on major usability catastrophes that tend to be so glaring they are obvious the first time they are observed and thus do not require repeated perusal of a recorded test session. Considering the time needed to analyze a videotape is approximately 10 times that of a user test, the time is better spent testing more subjects or testing more iterations of the design. Video is, however, appropriate in some situations. For example, a complete record of a series of user tests can be used to perform formal impact analysis of usability problems (Holzinger, 2004).
Questionnaires are useful for studying how end users use the system and what the preferred features, but need some experience to design. They are considered as indirect methods. Since questionnaires technique does not study the actual user interface where it only collects the opinions of users about it. Data about people's actual behavior should have precedence over people's claims of what they think to do. A simple form of questionnaire is making an interview. The interview can be adjusted to response the user and encourage elaboration (Holzinger , 2005).
1.4 Websites Usability Evaluation Tools
Several tools are being developed to automate testing and assessment of Web site usability. Usability testing cannot be fully automated, when possible, interfaces should be tested by users. Currently, there are several automated usability evaluation tools among them:
WebSAT: was developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Web Static Analyzer Tool (WebSAT) is a prototype tool that inspects the HTML composition of web pages for potential usability problems. WebSAT allows the usability engineer to investigate these potential problems so as to determine whether they should be purged from the design of the web pages. WebSAT inspects the HTML composition of web pages against numerous usability guidelines. it can perform inspections using either its own set of usability rules or those of the IEEE Std 2001- 1999. In either case, WebSAT expects as input the URL to a single web page or to a whole site. The output for a single web page is almost immediate (depending on the page size). In the case of a whole site, the length of time needed to analyze the site will depend on the number of pages that comprise the site; therefore, an email address must be supplied so that the destination of the result files can be identified upon completion. (National Institute for Standards and Technology, 1999).
Web Page Analyzer: it is a free web-based tool was provided by WebsiteOptimization (http://www.websiteoptimization.com). It can calculate page size, composition, and download time for website. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time. The script incorporates best practices from Human computer interaction research and web site optimization techniques into its recommendations. (Website Optomization Inc, 2009).
HTML Toolbox: available from NetMechanic Inc. HTML Toolbox is an award winning product that identifies site problems and automatically repairs HTML code for the websites. HTML Toolbox includes five Power Tools as follows:
Link Check: tests each link to identify, locate and report any broken or bad links that drive customers and spiders away.
HTML Check and Repair: discovers bad HTML tags and syntax that prevents browsers from processing the HTML and prevents visitors, both humans and spiders from reading the site. HTML Toolbox automatically fixes html problems upon request.
Browser Compatibility: All browsers are different. If the HTML is not supported by certain browsers, users of those browsers will have difficulty viewing your site. This tool will scan the website and report on HTML tags and attributes that aren't supported by different versions of the major browsers.
Load Time Check: Slow load times can deter users from viewing your site. Html Toolbox will check the download time for your Web pages. We will report the size of each object in your pages. We will also spot HTML problems (e.g. number of server connections, graphics, etc.) that can delay page loading.
Spell Check: HTML Toolbox tool will check the text on the pages for spelling errors. The user can use an optional Custom Dictionary to list words he wants (NetMechanic Inc., 2009).
1.5 Overview of the Yemeni Universities Websites
The history of Yemeni universities dates back to 1970 when Sana'a University was established. Today, there are seven public universities in Sana'a, Aden, Hodeida,Taiz, Ibb, Dhamar, and Hadramaut. In addition, there are more than fifteen private universities
Most of the Yemeni universities have websites that look like similar in the functions and purposes. The main purpose of these websites is to provide the required information and services as needed for their audiences. Generally, Yemeni universities websites are containing several main items as follows:
- Newsworthy items.
- Admission and registration
- Academics (Faculties and students).
In the first section that is related to university, every website provides a brief description about the university such as establishment year, university location and other. Newsworthy items are providing news and events related to university itself or other external sources.
Admission and regulation item provides information about admission regulations, admission procedures, and documents required for complete registration procedures. In the academics item there is information about the university programs, faculties, and departments.
1.6 Statement of Problem
Developing a website should be passed through several design guidelines to ensure that the website can achieve the purposes and goals intended to be accomplished. Generally, any website should meet the needs of its many stakeholders.
Yemeni universities are educational organizations that aim to provide the information and services to its stakeholder in efficient manner. To achieve this purpose, universities websites design should go through several design guidelines to ensure that the users feel better when they use these websites. Unfortunately, Yemeni universities websites may not yet evaluated in the context of usability.
Therefore, this research will be guided by this question: Are Yemeni university web sites highly rated in terms of usability?. By studying and evaluating these usability problems, this research can help webmasters to overcome these limitations and to improve the usability for these websites.
1.7 Objectives of the Research
The main objective of this research is to evaluate the usability of Yemini universities websites in order to provide feedback to guide these universities for improving their websites. There are two sub-objectives originated by the major objective as follows:
To evaluate each Yemini university website based on usability.
To make comparison among these websites based on the usability measurements.
1.8 Limitations of the Research
This research focuses on evaluating the Yemeni universities websites based on the usability view. Views of website design are ignored. The evaluation process is done using automatic tools for usability evaluation, where the user's opinions are not considered. The aim of this research is evaluating the usability of these websites based on internal usability to provide some recommendations for improving and promotion Yemeni universities websites.
CHAPTER 6
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
6.1 Introduction
This chapter presents the recommendations based on the data analysis and findings. This chapter is organized into three sections, conclusions, future work and recommendations.
6.2 Conclusion
Yemeni universities websites are educational organizations that aim to provide the information and services to its stakeholder in efficient manner. To achieve their purposes, universities websites design should go through several design guidelines to ensure that the users feel better while using these websites. By evaluating the usability aspects of these websites we can provide appropriate recommendations to make these websites more usable. We used one approach for the evaluation that is: the evaluation based on online automated tools.
The results obtained from the approach showed that the usability of Yemeni Universities Websites relatively not good (moderate). such as design and interface, performance and effectiveness therefore we provided general guidelines for webmasters to increase the usability of their websites.
6.3 Future Work
There are several works that can be done in the future among them:
We feel that it would be good to perform more thorough information gathering, possibly using surveys or interviews to get more ideas and suggestions.
Further analysis of other websites could be performed as well, in an attempt to find and correct failings, increase the overall quality of the Yemeni Universities' Websites, and improve the corresponding reputation.
Other research could also be performed is to compare the Yemeni Universities Websites with those universities websites from other Countries to achieve the competition between them in order to increase the usability for all universities websites.
Recommendations for Improving Usability
At This section a list of several recommendations and guidelines for improving the usability of Yemeni university websites were developed based on the results and analysis described above. These recommendations are presented as follows:
Use background images sparingly and make sure they are simple, especially if they are used behind text: Background images can make it difficult for users to read foreground text. A single, large, complex background image (including a picture) can substantially slow page download rates. If background images must be employed, use small, simple images and / or keep the image resolution as low as possible.
Take steps to ensure that images on the Website do not slow page download times unnecessarily: User frustration increases as the length of time spent interacting with a system increases. Users tolerate less delay if they believe the task should be easy for the computer. One study reported that users rated latencies of up to five seconds as good. Delays over ten seconds were rated as poor. Users rate pages with long delays as being less interesting and more difficult to scan. One study reported no relationship between slow page download times and users giving up. To speed download times, use several small images rather than a single large image on a page; use interlacing or progressive images; and use several of the same images. Designers should also minimize the number of different colors used in an image and put HEIGHT and WIDTH pixel dimension tags in an image reference. To achieve faster response time for users with dial-up modems, limit page size to less than 30,000 bytes.
Ensure that Website images convey the intended message to users, not just to designers: Users and designers tend to differ in what they think is appropriate to convey a message. When attempting to select the best graphic from a set of graphics, users tend to select those that most other users would have selected (i.e., those that look familiar), while most developers favor graphics that look more artistic. One study found that seventy-five percent of users are able to find information on a content and link-rich site, whereas only seventeen percent could find the same information on a graphic-intensive site.
Use images only when they are critical to the success of a Website: Ensure that a Website's graphics add value and increase the clarity of the information on the site. Certain graphics can make some Websites much more interesting for users, and users may be willing to wait a few extra seconds for them to load. Users tend to be most frustrated if they wait several seconds for a graphic to download, and then find that the image does not add any value. Some decorative graphics are acceptable when they do not distract the user.
Provide feedback to let users know where they are in the Website: Feedback provides users with the information they need to understand where they are within the Website, and for proceeding to the next activity. Examples of feedback include providing path and hierarchy information, matching link text to the destination page's heading, and creating URLs that relate to the user's location on the site. Other forms of feedback include changing the color of a link that has been clicked (suggesting that destination has been visited), and using other visual cues to indicate the active portion of the screen.
Do not require users to scroll purely navigational pages: Ideally, navigation-only pages should contain no more than one screenful of information. Users should not need to scroll the page, even a small distance. One study showed that users considered the bottom of one screenful as the end of a page, and they did not scroll further to find additional navigational options.
Make links clear and concise without sacrificing appropriate descriptions: Make the links to faculty information and staff information more descriptive of their destinations and keep the names of links adequately updated.
Use keywords at the head of a link name: Minimize the length of each link so that the link is more easily understood and correct the link information on the site map so that the links are alphabetized by the keyword.
Links should be made to appear distinct from other text and from one another: The site should eliminate the use of underlined text that is not intended to be a hyperlink by using bold or italicized letters for emphasis and the link should also be separated better so that they do not appear connected.
Links should help users find information more efficiently: As many links as possible should be provided to the user. This could be accomplished by providing descriptive major heading links and fly-out or drop down subheadings presenting the information held within. This would allow users to recognize the path to information rather than recall it.
Use meaningful graphics: Don't just decorate the page with stock art. Images are powerful communicators when they show items of interest to users. Use graphics only when they support navigation or understanding.
Visually align page elements, either vertically or horizontally: Users prefer consistent alignments for items such as text blocks, rows, columns, checkboxes, radio buttons, data entry fields, etc. Use consistent alignments across all Web pages.
Make page-length decisions that support the primary use of the Web page: In general, use shorter pages for homepages and navigation pages, and pages that need to be quickly browsed and/or read online. Use longer pages to (1) facilitate uninterrupted reading, especially on content pages; (2) match the structure of a paper counterpart; (3) simplify page maintenance (fewer Web page files to maintain); and, (4) make pages more convenient to download and print.
Use color to help users understand what does and does not go together: Color coding permits users to rapidly scan and quickly perceive patterns and relationships among items. Items that share the same color will be considered as being related to each other, while items with prominent color differences will seem to be different. People can distinguish up to ten different colors that are assigned to different categories, but it may be safer to use no more than five different colors for category coding. If more than ten different colors are used, the effects of any particular relationship will be lost. Do not use color alone to convey information.
Do not make important images look like banner advertisements or gratuitous decorations: In a recent study, a graphic developed to inform users about access to live help was not clicked because many users thought it was an advertisement. Even though the graphic was larger than most other graphics on the page, some users missed the item completely because the graphic looked too much like a banner advertisement (Leavitt & Shneiderman, 2006), (Nielsen, 2002).
