Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Torben Amtoft / Grace Baptist church is a Christian church that is actively reaching out to college students, military families and other groups of people. They aim to impact not only the community of Manhattan and nearby areas but also to reach around the world with the Gospel. It is very important for the church to have a user friendly website so as to introduce Grace Baptist Church to people who may have an interest in Christianity and church activities. Considering the limitations of the current church website, the administrator of Grace Baptist Church decided to have a new website that better represents the church and attract people to know more about the church’s mission. I and another student Nikhita Addanki from computer science department were working together on this project. The main objective of this project is to redesign and implement a website for Grace Baptist Church. The website will be used to post updated information about church events, announcements and opportunities, share videos and blogs, and let people around the world know about Grace Baptist Church and its mission. The new website has a better page appearance, a well organized structure and mobile support. It is implemented using WordPress, a free content management system, so that people from the church can early update the information without knowing much about web techniques. Alone with the implementation, I also reviewed some articles regarding website usability and performance to assure the quality of the new website. A performance test has also been conducted to evaluate the result.

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The World Wide Web has emerged as a powerful communications medium. With the development of new technologies, organizational websites are getting bigger and more complex, using design elements such as sound and motion to engage users' attention. This project will look at how users respond to the ways designers and developers present information on the web in a dynamic form which incorporates sound and motion. The research will focus on evaluating the communicative effectiveness of websites (particularly websites with different degrees of dynamic content in them), and will see if certain ways of presenting dynamic content are more effective than others. The method used will consist of observing users while they try to accomplish specific tasks on selected websites, through interviews, questionnaires and through verbal protocol ('think aloud') analysis. Effectiveness will be measured by such things as how long it takes them to complete each task, how successful they were in finding the necessary information, and the ease of use. Other factors which provide possible explanations for differences in effectiveness will also be measured; these will be drawn from two theoretical bases: communication theory (Fiske, 1982) and social psychology (Ajzen, 1991; Klobas & Morrison, 1999). The outcome of the research will be identification of problem areas associated with the effectiveness of information delivery by dynamic sites. Guidelines for communication designers, information architects and developers of websites, as they evaluate the success of dynamic sites, will be an appendix to the research.

Greitas internetinių svetainių skaičiaus padidėjimas per paskutinius keletą metų rodo informacijos, pasiekiamos internetu, svarbą. Daug įmonių kuria internetines svetaines, bet jie susiduria su problemomis, susijusiomis su reikalavimų pasikeitimais kūrimo eigoje. Šiame darbe nagrinėjama Agile požiūrio pritaikymo galimybės internetinėms svetainėms kurti. Darbe atlikta jau esamų metodų analizė, kuri parodė, kad internetinių svetainių kūrimui nėra visiškai tinkamo metodo, todėl darbo uždavinys - sukurti metodą, paremtą Scrum ir FDD savybėmis internetinių svetainių kūrimui. / A fast increase in the number of web sites the last years, shows the importance of information existing in web sites giving the possibility for users to have access to it. Many companies create websites, but they face problems related with requirements changing until the developing process completes. In this work you will find analysis of software development methods. Agile approach allows changing requirements even in last phase of the developing process. Creating a web site does not follow one single path and there is no ideal method creating a web site. In this dissertation will be analyzed a method for web sites development based on Agile approach.

Thesis (M.S. Ed.) - - Bank Street College of Education, New York, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references and abstract.

With the rapid development of the Internet and web technology, governments worldwide have caught onto this revolution and shown rapid development of electronic government (e-government) in the public sector. Nowadays, there are a significant number of e-governments that are accessible via the Internet and provide a range of information and services. However, existing research indicates that e-government still faces the challenge of generating greater users’ interaction in terms of accessing information, utilizing services and participating in e-government decision making. Among a variety of reasons for this challenge, usability and credibility have been found to be the key factors in users’ decisions about e-government engagement and need to be explored. This research attempts to evaluate the usability and credibility of current e-governments, focusing on specific e-government websites in the UK. This research adopted heuristic evaluation, which is based on users’ perception, to implement a thorough and in-depth assessment of e-government websites. In addition, to obtain a more comprehensive evaluation, users’ performance was measured in order to reveal the level of users’ interaction with e-government websites when they perform a set of practical tasks. The research design was a quasi-experimental, consisting of two linked experiments. Experiment 1 aimed to evaluate usability and credibility of the target e-government websites, identifying a range of existing usability and credibility problems. Based on the usability and credibility problems found, design solutions were proposed for each of the target e-government websites. Experiment 2 aimed to examine the effects of the proposed design solutions on the usability and credibility problems identified on the redesigned e-government websites. The findings of experiment 1 suggested that the e-government websites need to improve their usability and credibility. In particular, the most serious usability problems found in the target e-government websites lay within the areas of “aesthetic and minimalist design”, “recognition rather than recall”, and “consistency and standards”. In addition, the most serious credibility problems identified were within the areas of “site looks professional”, “make site easy to use and useful”, and “show the honest and trustworthy people behind the site”. The findings of experiment 2 revealed that the usability and credibility problems found in experiment 1 had been improved by the proposed design solutions. Furthermore, these improvements might increase the overall usability and credibility of the target e-government websites, making the users’ task performance better within the redesigned e-government websites. Based on the findings of the experiments, this research developed a set of usability and credibility guidelines. Each guideline addressed a number of the specific usability and credibility elements at the detailed level of e-government website design. These guidelines can be helpful to guide designers to develop more usable and credible e-government websites.

The emergency department at Södersjukhuset is one of the largest in the Nordic region. There is a large workforce with several skills at different levels, which means that the placement of the personnel becomes complex. The problem with the current placement method is that it is a manual and time consuming process. This report aims to solve this problem by creating a prototype of an automated and web-based placement system. During the development of the prototype different programming languages were used in unison to create a website with different functions. The most important functions to create were a search tool for names, save the placements in the form of a PDF-file and to be able to clear the placements.   The goals of the project were satisfied. However, several improvements can be made to the prototype to make it more valuable for the workplace. The advantage of the prototype was that it saves time for the scheduling staff. Additionally, it facilitates the work for the on-duty personnel as the placement is easily visualised for every module at the emergency department. / Södersjukhusets akutmottagning är en av Nordens största. Där finns en stor personalstyrka med olika yrkesgrupper och inom dem finns flera olika kompetensnivåer, vilket medför att placeringen av personalen blir komplex. Problemet med nuvarande placeringssystem är att det är en manuell och tidskrävande process. Målet för projektet var att lösa detta problem genom att skapa en prototyp av ett automatiserat och webbaserat placeringssystem.  Under utvecklingen av prototypen användes olika programmeringsspråk i samklang för att skapa en hemsida med olika funktioner. De viktigaste funktionerna som skapades var att kunna söka efter namn, spara placeringen i form av en PDF-fil samt att kunna rensa placeringen på information.   Målen för arbetet uppfylldes. Samtidigt finns det flera utvecklingsområden för prototypen som kan göra den mer användbar och värdefull för arbetsplatsens placering av personal. Fördelen med prototypen var att den sparar tid för bemanningspersonalen samt underlättar arbetet för personalen i tjänst då hela placeringen enklare kan visualiseras på varje modul.

This research assessed website management and development practices across the United Kingdom university library sector. As a starting point, the design and features of this group of websites was recorded against criteria drawn from the extant literature. This activity established core content and features of UK library websites as: a search box or link for searching the library catalogue, electronic resources or website; a navigation column on the left and breadcrumb trail to aid information location and website orientation; homepage design was repeated on library website sub-pages; university brand elements appeared in the banner; and a contact us link was provided for communication with library personnel. Library websites conformed to 14 of the 20 homepage usability guidelines examined indicating that web managers were taking steps to ensure that users were well served by their websites. Areas for improvement included better navigation support (sitemap/index), greater adoption of new technologies and more interactive features. Website management and development practices were established through national survey and in-depth case studies. These illustrated the adoption of a team approach to website management and development; formal website policy and strategy were not routinely created; library web personnel and their ability to build effective links with colleagues at the institution made a valuable contribution to the success of a library website; corporate services and institutional practices played an important part in library website development; library staff were actively engaged in consultations with their website audience; and a user focused approach to website development prevailed. User studies and metric data were considered in the website evaluation and development process. However, there were some issues with both data streams and interpreting metric data to inform website development. Evaluation and development activities were not always possible due to staff/time shortages, technical constraints, corporate website templates, and, to a lesser extent, lack of finance.

The Master’s thesis contains the theoretical part with the methods and tools that were used for the analysis of the current development of the websites in the company HARTMANN - RICO a.s. Using these methods and tools have been designed new processes associated with the transition from outsourcing on private development websites in the system Adobe CQ5.

This paper examines the results of a usability study for finding aids from the Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University. In 2005, the Special Collections Research Center reformatted its finding aids so that the container information, typically located on the left-hand side of the document, moved to the right-hand side of the document. The study tested the effectiveness of this change, and determined that traditional finding aids performed better. The analysis of the study’s results is followed by a discussion about Web usability guidelines for online finding aids.