A tool for design-time usability evaluation of web user interfaces

Abstract

The diversity of smartphones and tablet computers has become intrinsic part of modern life. Following usability guidelines while designing web user interface (UI) is an essential requirement for each web application. Even a minor change in UI could lead to usability problems, e.g. changing background or foreground colour of buttons could cause usability problems especially for people with disabilities. Empirical evaluation methods such as questionnaires and Card Sorting are effective in finding such problems. Nevertheless, these methods cannot be used widely when time, money and evaluators are scarce. The purpose of our work is to deliver a tool for design-time automatic evaluation of UI conformance to category-specific usability guidelines. The main contribution of this solution is enabling immediate cost-efficient and automatic web UI evaluation that conforms to available and set standards. This approach is being integrated into the Estonian eGovernment authority in order to automate usability evaluation of web applications.