This master thesis focuses on the problem of web sites auditing. The three main areas covered in the thesis are usability, accessibility and search engine optimization. These three categories are main elements resulting in good or bad website. The main aim of this thesis is to describe the basic rules and recommendation for each of these three categories. This area is undergoing very fast and neverending development so I will also try to cover latests trends and directions. The first, theoretical part, will result in selection of grading criterias based on each of the three categories. These criterias will be later used to analyze the biggest players in the area of agricultural companies and organizations. The result of this audit will be ranking of each company website together with recommendations how to improve them. It will be also possible to recognize the main mistakes and problems of commercial websites.

The Open Web Application Security Project identifies that the number one vulnerability in mobile applications is the misuse of platform-provided security mechanisms. This means that platforms like iOS and Android, which now account for 99.8\% of the mobile phone market, are providing mechanisms that are consistently being used in an incorrect manner. This statistic shines a spotlight onto both platforms. Why is it that so many people are misusing platform provided security mechanisms? And is it the platform’s fault? The supposition of this paper is that both iOS and Android are not creating usable security mechanisms. This paper is meant to be a direct response to the number one spot on the OWASP Top Ten Mobile Vulnerabilities list. As a result, our primary goal is to identify whether or not iOS and Android are creating usable security mechanisms. To do this we first proposed an evaluation framework that is tailored to evaluate the usability of mobile device security mechanisms. Then we used it to evaluate seven of the most important and therefore most popular security mechanisms provided by iOS and Android. Through this evaluation we not only hope to develop a clear landscape of overall mobile security mechanism usability, but we also hope to compare the usability across the two platforms. Overall, it was found that both platforms adequately supported the more popular security mechanisms like key storage and HTTPS. Whereas support for some of the more low-level mechanisms, like encryption and MACs, were often neglected. Such neglect could be seen in a number of different ways; however, the most common neglect came in the form of old documentation, or APIs that are long over do for a rebuild or increased abstraction. Furthermore, both platforms barely addressed the testing of implementations, despite the fact that testing is arguably the most important part of the software development cycle. Both iOS and Android seldom gave the developer any guidance on verifying the functionality of their implementations.

In cybersecurity, understanding the technologies and the best ways to interface with them is paramount for staying ahead of growing cyberthreats. Developers of cybersecurity software will benefit greatly from a greater understanding of how users prefer to interact with cybersecurity technology. In the modern world, two primary interface methods are currently used: the command-line interface (CLI) and the graphical user interface (GUI). This study is a survey and introspective into what benefits and drawbacks that each method has when in the hands of users who do not have a comprehensive background in cybersecurity. Untrained individuals showed proficiency when working with GUI systems, showing that developing modern cybersecurity systems with GUIs would improve ease of use for such individuals. Additionally, the CLI was favorable for more complex operations but was difficult for users who were not accustomed to the CLI.

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Inconsistencies among testing methods and results in previous research prompted this study that builds upon a systematic usability testing research framework to better understand how interface medium influences users’ abilities to detect usability flaws in applications. Medium was tested to identify its effects on users’ perceptions of usability and abilities to detect usability problems and severe usability problems. Also explored was the relationship between users’ perceptions of usability and abilities to detect usability problems. Results indicated that medium has no effect on users’ abilities to detect usability problems or perceptions of usability. However, results did indicate an interaction between medium and the tested application in which users were able to identify significantly more usability problems on a higher fidelity medium using a particular application. Results also indicated that as users’ perceptions of an application’s usability increases, the users are less able to detect usability problems in that application.

With the rapid development of mobile device technology, smartphones are now not only the tool for young people but also for elderly people. However, the complicated steps of interacting with smartphones are stopping them from having a good user experience. One of the reasons is that application designers do not take consideration of the user group of elderly people. Our pilot survey shows that most elderly people lack the skills required to use a smartphone without obstacles, like typing. We also conducted an experiment with 8 participants that targeting on the usability of a daily used application, Contact List (CL), and based on a Chinese language system. We developed an android application that proposed a new method of showing the contact list according to the language usage of Chinese for this study. By asking participants to finish the same tasks on the traditional CL applications on their phones or on our application and observing their operations, we obtained useful feedback in terms of usability issues. Our experiment also tried to find out whether the method we proposed in the new application can lead to a better user experience for elderly people.

Traditional email encryption methods are difficult to set up, as they require senders to obtain a message recipient's public key before a secure communication can be sent. Easy Accessible Secure Email (EASEmail) addresses the key establishment and exchange issues of encrypted email by using a lightweight symmetric key server. Users can send a secure email without establishing or exchanging keys with the recipient in advance. With usability as its primary goal, EASEmail strives to bring usable secure email communication to the masses.

The formative study investigated health information for seniors on the Internet with consideration of usability of the selected system, user's perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, system use, and performance, i.e. information retention. A theoretical model was developed by the researcher, i.e. JAM's Senior Health Information Technology Acceptance Model, as an enhanced version of the traditional Davis Technology Acceptance Model. The new model provided the critical relationship between the senior health information system and other technology acceptance components. Computer self-efficacy was added to the hypothetical model to better explain the seniors' technology usage and performance. The hypotheses and the research plan included: four professional experts, who assessed the site for usability, and 68 of 145 seniors who began the survey completed a three-part senior participant survey. Data was collected by a third party and the author. Implications for seniors, professionals, and society are presented. The senior population is the subject of the research. Professionals working with seniors, the Internet, health information, and technology acceptance are served by the formative study to further clarify the relationship of the issues. The topic is considered a societal issue as a large segment of the population is composed of seniors. Their welfare and interests impact society and other generations. The results suggested computer self-efficacy is irrelevant for perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness however self-efficacy contributed to information retention. Usability affects perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. There is a highly significant, though not very strong, relation between those variables. Perceived usefulness is a good indicator of a return visit to the site and senior recommendations of the site to others. These are two new variables that were not included in the model. There is no relationship between usability and computer self-efficacy. There was significance between usability and system use, but little relevance has pointed toward information retention (IR). The results of the analysis suggest that the hypothesized model information retention level did not predict senior IR based on human factor professionals' and senior users' usability ratings. Attrition according to qualitative feedback was the result of browser and equipment issues, ease of use and navigation. Future research endeavors should be devoted to usability and use of other systems for the senior population.

I vår vardag kommer vi som användare i kontakt med en massa olika gränssnitt, därför är det av stor vikt att de fungerar bra och har tydliga instruktioner för hur de ska användas, alltså att de har en god användbarhet. Via den ökade digitaliseringen så har folk idag möjligheten att göra arbete eller utbildning på distans, vilket är något som har varit till stor hjälp den senaste tiden under covidpandemin. Då arbete och utbildning på distans har blivit vanligare, så är det av viktigt att vi har möjligheten att kunna utföra användbarhetstester på distans. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka användarbarheten hos tidsrapporteringssystemet Tidig samt att jämföra olika testverktyg för att se vilket verktyg som bäst passar för framtida användbarhetstester på Tidig. Testerna kommer vara av typen URUT (Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing) vilket betyder att användbarhetstester är obevakade och görs på distans för en enklare insamling av data, det insamlade datat förväntas ge en bättre bild av användbarheten hos tidsrapporteringssystemet för framtida förbättringsarbete samt vilket verktyg som bör användas vid framtida användbarhetstester. Resultat av användbarhetstesterna pekar på att tidsrapporteringssystemet Tidig har en hög användbarhet. Deltagarna under användbarhetstesternas gång hade inga svårighet att lösa de allra flesta uppgifterna. Frågorna som ställdes visade att deltagarna var nöjda med systemet men önskar att små förbättringar görs på vissa delar av tidsrapporteringssystemet. Jämförelsen av verktygen visar att det verktyg som bäst passar för framtida användbarhetstester på Tidig är testverktyget Loop11. Loop11 erbjuder en mängd olika funktioner för att samla in kvantitativt och kvalitativt data, testverktyget ger även statistik på uppgifter, frågor och de enkäter som finns med i användbarhetstesterna. / In our everyday life, we as users encounter many different interfaces, therefore it is of great importance that they work well and have clear instructions for how to use them, i.e., that they have a good usability. Through the increased digitization, people today can work or study remotely, which is something that has been of great help recently during the covid pandemic. Since remote work and education has become common, it is important that we can also do our usability tests remotely. The purpose of this work is to investigate the usability of the time reporting system Tidig and to compare different test tools to see which tool is best suited for future usability tests on Tidig. The tests will be of the type URUT (Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing), which means that usability tests are unmoderated and done remotely for easier data collection. With the given data the result is expected to give a better picture of the usability of time reporting systems for future improvement work as well as which tool should be used in future usability tests. The results of the usability tests have shown that the time reporting system Tidig has a high usability. During the usability tests, the participants did not have a major difficulty in solving most of the tasks. The questions that were asked showed that the participants were satisfied with the system but would like small improvements to be made on certain parts of the time reporting system. The comparison of the tools shows that the tool best suited for future usability tests on Tidig is the Loop11 test tool. Loop11 offers a variety of functions to collect quantitative and qualitative data, the test tool also provides statistics on tasks, questions and the questionnaires.

This study addressed how usability improvement and motivational design affect learners' motivation and learning performance in a self-paced, online learning environment. The study also investigated the interrelationships between commonly-used usability measures and the motivation measures based on Keller's ARCS model. A two-phase study approach was used. In Phase I, an existing self-paced, online safety training tutorial was used as the baseline. Two alternative designs were developed with improved usability and motivational design based on the ARCS model. In Phase II, the effects of the three interface designs were evaluated through a three-group, generalized randomized block covariate design experiment. A total of seventy-two college students (48 males and 24 females) participated in the usability testing and the online training session using one of the interface designs. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed. Results suggested a significant interface design effect on learner motivation. Learners who used the interface design with both usability improvement and motivational design applied (the UM group) showed the highest level of motivation. In particular, the attention level of the learners in the UM group was significantly higher than the baseline group. Results also indicated motivation differences between genders. Females showed higher scores than males in overall motivation score and in each of the four subscales of attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. No significant difference in learning performance was found among the three treatment groups using different interface designs. None of the usability or motivation measures was a significant predictor of learning performance. Small to medium positive correlations were found between usability satisfaction and three motivation measures, i.e., attention, relevance and satisfaction. Content analysis identified a number of interface design components to be relevant to learners' motivation components: overall appearance, graphics/multimedia, text appearance, page layout, navigation, and paging/scrolling. Implications and design recommendations for online tutorial interface design were discussed. Additional discussion was provided regarding the online learning environment and the integration of usability, motivation, and instructional design and technology. / Ph. D.