Usability Testing of Departmental Web Sites: A Case Study with Authentic Users and Authentic Tasks

The purpose of this study is to determine usability problems of a university departmental web site by authentic users and authentic tasks and also to suggest solutions to these problems. The study group consisted of 9 participants including 4 undergraduate students and 5 academicians (4 research assistants who are graduate students and one instructor). Study is designed by recording the process of authentic task performance of authentic users in departmental web site and analyzing these records. Seven participants' task performance processes were recorded on computer by Captivate program as a video feed including mouse clicks and timeline. In addition, two participants' task performance processes and eye movements during this process were recorded by an eye tracking machine. In the data analysis, recordings from task process were analyzed and the issues for which users had difficulties with, the issues which users hesitated while performing, the time spent on each task, repeated tasks, successful and unsuccessful tasks were discovered comparatively with observer notes. Also eye tracking data were analyzed according to number of fixation and fixation length data on area of interest regions. Usability problems are determined based on the findings, and solutions to these problems are suggested.