<p>Denna studie beskriver innebörden i begreppen användbarhet och Activity Theory, samt hur den senare kan användas för att stärka utvecklingen av användbara webbplatser. Studien är genomförd ur ett utvecklarperspektiv. Resultatet av studien visar att användbarhet är en egenskap som uppstår i användandet av en artefakt, detta pekar både teori och empiri på. Studien visar också att Activity Theory kan användas på flera sätt för att stärka utvecklingen av användbara webbplatser. Vi anser att de resultat vi kommit fram till i vår studie gäller inte bara för utveckling av webbplatser utan de gäller även utvecklingen av informationssystem och informationsteknologi i en vidare utsträckning.</p>

<p>As an increasing number of people are logging on to the internet to do their shopping, it is imperative for a site to be accessible and usable. Nielsen’s heuristic method is one esteemed method that many web site developers use in their design work. One study suggests that online shopping needs most improvement with the heuristics “User control and freedom” where an undo button often is lacking and in ‘Help and Documentation’ where the user may not easily switch between their work and the help. The study, however, has been made on grocery shops alone.</p><p>The following study adopts the results of the past study as hypotheses and investigates if they hold true for another type of online shopping site – women’s apparel. The results of the study confirm that these two heuristics indeed are the two most troublesome. However, for the biggest usability disaster under each, the results are either inapplicable or only lend weak support. The following results lend more support to a possible generalization for all online sites and better awareness among software developers of online shopping sites. Yet a more consistent base of common usability disasters under these two specific heuristics needs to be developed.</p>

<p>Usability is a way to study how good a website is which is what our research builds upon. On a mission from Liseberg our purpose is to find out if their website liseberg.se is good from a user’s perspective. Our way of carrying this out where grounded upon a qualitative study through observations and following interviews with a number of participants. By compositing tools of method we have started with the theories descriptions of usability tests and we have also used the theories to be able to reflect around and to understand the results from the tests. To be able to get the best use of the theories we have put together a frame with important concepts which describes usability in a structure and concrete way. These concepts works as a starting point of our data collection. In observations and the following interviews certain usability problems with liseberg.se appear. These results then are put to analysis based upon theories and our own understanding of the subject. To sum up a description of what should be reflected upon and changed on a website, with liseberg.se as an example, is presented. We want to show what makes the good website.</p> / <p>Användbarhet är ett sätt att studera hur bra en webbplats är vilket är vad vår undersökning bygger på. På uppdrag av Liseberg har vi som syfte att ta reda på om deras webbplats liseberg.se är bra ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. Vårt sätt att genomföra detta grundar sig på en kvalitativ studie genom observationer och efterföljande intervjuer med ett antal testdeltagare. I framtagning av metodverktyg så har vi utgått från teoriernas beskrivning av användbarhetstest och vi har även använt teorierna för att kunna reflektera kring och utläsa resultat från undersökningar. För att kunna få störst användning av teorierna har vi sammanställt en ram med viktiga begrepp som beskriver användbarhet på ett strukturerat och konkret sätt. Dessa begrepp fungerar som utgångspunkt för vår datainsamling. I observationer och efterföljande intervjuer framkommer vissa användbarhetsproblem med liseberg.se. Dessa resultat analyseras sedan utifrån teorier och vår egen förståelse i ämnet. Sammanfattningsvis beskrivs vad som bör reflekteras kring och förändras på en webbplats, med liseberg.se som exempel. Vi vill visa vad som utgör den goda webbplatsen.</p>

In 1998, the United States Congress amended Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to require federal agencies to make electronic and information technology accessible. The first accessibility guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, were published in 1999. This study tests the usable accessibility of cultural institution web sites. Four cultural institution web sites were selected, two that were WCAG 1.0 compliant and that were not, were selected for evaluation. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis was conducted. Significant differences were found in the perceived usability of the guideline-compliant web sites; significance was found for one of three tasks. Overall, the guideline-compliant sites received higher usability ratings, but the task completion rates did not support a claim of greater usability.

Research reports that the search for health information is the fourth most popular activity being done on the web (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2004). However, for disabled persons, barriers experienced when interfacing with the Internet may cause healthcare websites to be inaccessible to them. This study explores the level of accessibility of healthcare websites and the relationship between accessibility and usability by determining how compliant state department of health and human services websites are with accessibility and usability guidelines. A content analysis of each state’s department of health and human services website was conducted. Results revealed that state department of health and human services websites are not very compliant with accessibility guidelines, are somewhat compliant with usability guidelines, and overall are not very accessible. The findings also indicate that there is a significant moderate relationship between accessibility and usability which suggests that the two concepts are interconnected.

The purpose of this study has been to research how to implement a graphical interface for presenting information security information to management. The major conclusion of the study is that management use this kind of information mainly for financial and strategic matters. Hence the information must be presented in a way that enhances this use of the information. The study also concludes that people act insecure mainly due to: a) Insufficient knowledge of how/why to act secure. b) The users do not want to act secure due to social and organisational factors. To fight the first factor, the management need a tool that helps them to see where to spend their resources. To fight the second factor, the organisation needs to be well educated and the company culture should allow the users to act secure. Three heuristics for the design of information security solutions for management and a design solution for the interface are also presented in the study. The three heuristics are: 1. Provide overview information very early in the program. The ordinary manager does not have the time or the knowledge to make this overview by himself/herself. 2. Do not overwhelm the user. The ordinary management man/woman is not interested in the details of the information security and/or do not have time to read this sort of information. If he or she wants to access the details, he or she is likely to find them (if they are placed in a logical place). 3. Provide information in a way that is common to the manager. Use wordings that the user understands. Provide contextual help for expressions that must be presented in a technical way.

This paper adopts a communication perspective on public electronic forms (e-forms). By doing so we define forms as instruments for communication and, thus, also instruments through which citizens perform different communicative actions towards government agencies. As such instruments, the forms might be more or less useful. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of an e-form that increase the communication quality. We conduct a theoretical synthesis of three existing approaches for designing information systems. The result is a combined theory on key features of an e-form that make the establishment of communication quality more likely. The result consists of four key concepts, each of which give rise to one set of design principles for communication from the issuer of the e-form to the user (citizen), and one set of design principles for communication from the user (citizen) to the recipient of the e-form.

Utvärderingar är viktigt att göra på alla slags produkter. Det finns en uppsjö av olika tillvägagångssätt för att utvärdera en webbplats användbarhet. Syftet med den här rapporten är att undersöka om metoderna expertutvärdering och användartestning är ett tillräckligt effektivt och enkelt ramverk att använda för att grundligt utvärdera en webbplats ur ett användbarhetsperspektiv. Vi har använt dessa metoder för att utvärdera en webbplats och sedan analyserat huruvida metoderna har kompletterat varandra när det kommer till antalet och typen av funna fel. Undersökningen visar att båda metoderna genererar ungefär lika många unika problem var för sig och att de kompletterar varandra mycket bra. Kombinationen av de två metoderna har givit en tillräckligt övergripande beskrivning av problembilden och även genererat en god mängd med användbarhetsproblem och förslag till förändringar både ur en användares och en interaktionsdesigners perspektiv.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is widely used by software engineers as the basis of analysis and design in software development. However, UML ignores human factors in the course of software development because of its strong emphasis on the internal structure and functionality of the application. This thesis presents a method of mapping human-computer interaction (HCI) requirement specifications generated by usability engineering (UE) methodologies (e.g. Putting Usability First (PUF)) into UML specifications. These two sets of requirement specification are specified, using Extensible Markup Language (XML) so that HCI requirement specifications can be integrated into UML ones. A Mapping Tool was developed to facilitate the creation of mappings between PUF XML tags and XMI tags. The Mapping Tool was used to create mappings between PUF and UML requirement specifications. This mapping process and its outputs were evaluated to demonstrate that the tool worked. The results of the evaluation show that the HCI requirement specification represented by the PUF XML tags can improve the UML specification by adding them into the XMI tags.

After formulating the problem and reviewing relevant research literature, a study was performed that compared reverse engineering with traditional scenario-based techniques in usability evaluation. In this case study, an online tool for creating asthma action plans was created and evaluated through questionnaires and focus groups. The tool was then tested in a controlled study using both a traditional scenario-based approach and the reverse engineering method. A group of twelve users built asthma action plans using each method in a randomized order. Results concerning usability, efficiency and the types of usability problems found were reported, along with recommendations for further research in the use of reverse engineering as a method of usability evaluation.