ฐะปะนีย์ (ติรพัฒน์) ตรีรัตนภรณ์. The Influence of Design Dimensions on Website Usability : An Empirical Study. Doctoral Degree(Computer Engineering). King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. KMUTT Library. : King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, 2010.
The Influence of Design Dimensions on Website Usability : An Empirical Study
Abstract:
Many books, articles and research studies offer guidelines for designing usable
websites. However, most such guidelines are based on intuition or informal observation
rather than experimental data. The few experimental studies that exist have focused on
artificially constructed websites and looked at only one or two website design factors.
Very little research has taken a holistic view looking at many variables in actual
websites.
This research empirically examines the usability impact of multiple design dimensions
in real world websites. We report on two experiments in which we obtained objective
ratings of design dimensions then related these ratings to subjects' performance on
information seeking tasks. The two experiments produced highly consistent results,
suggesting that number of links on a page and number of text sizes strongly influence
usability. Clear information partitioning and number of graphics also affected
performance. By surveying user satisfaction for different sites, we were able to conclude
that subjects prefer 11-20 links and two or three text sizes per page.
Our research provides some of the first experimental evidence in a problem area that has
been dominated by anecdote and assumption. Although only a few dimensions showed
significant usability effects, we believe that our methodology can be refined to identify
other aspects of website design that influence usability.