Development of the evaluation form for expert inspections of web portals

Abstract

Web portals are a special breed of web sites, providing a large and diverse user population with a blend of information, services and facilities. Due to the lack of heuristics for the design and evaluation of general portals, we have conducted an experimental work to create research instrument for expert inspections. A set of 36 equally-levelled guidelines was developed to measure the hypothetical usability categories which reflect the four most distinctive elements of the contemporary web design process. The Portal Guidelines for expert inspections prove valuable to both novice inspectors and HCI experts, but further research will be required to validate the findings of this study. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.