Leading Web Usability Evaluations to WAUTER

Sandrine Balbo, Steve Goschnick, Derek Tong
Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3010 - Australia

Cécile Paris
ICT Centre, CSIRO, Locked bag 17, North-Ryde NSW 1670 - Australia

Keywords

Usability evaluation. Web log monitoring. Task models. Automatic analysis..

Abstract

The WWW is now ubiquitous, and yet its usability is still of major concern. Usability testing methods are able to identify flaws prior to the launch of a site. However, their application typically involves direct observation, requiring availability of participants and evaluators in a synchronised manner. This, in turn, implies tight schedules with little leeway for flexibility. In this paper, we present WAUTER (Web Automatic Usability Testing EnviRonment), a suite of open source tools to assist in web usability evaluation, capturing and comparing intended vs. actual use of a web site. WAUTER harnesses web user visits to do so and is also intended to support remote evaluation.