THE USEFULNESS OF USER TESTING METHODS IN IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS ON UNIVERSITY WEBSITES

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the usefulness of three user testing methods (observation, and using both quantitative and qualitative data from a post-test questionnaire) in terms of their ability or inability to find specific usability problems on university websites. The results showed that observation was the best method, compared to the other two, in identifying large numbers of major and minor usability problems on university websites. The results also showed that employing qualitative data from a post-test questionnaire was a useful complementary method since this identified additional usability problems that were not identified by the observation method. However, the results showed that the quantitative data from the post-test questionnaire were inaccurate and ineffective in terms of identifying usability problems on such websites.