Content analysis of usability evaluation method for academic websites / Nik Masliza Ramli

Academic website became the standard tool for delivering services to students, faculty and staff in a cost effective manner. Despite widespread use of web applications, very little has been done to critically examine their usability. There is a very few guideline that new researchers or website developers that they can use to do usability evaluation. Therefore, this study will analyse the appropriate usability evaluation methods that can be used when evaluating academic website and to identify trend or pattern for usability methods used. This study will use content analysis as the method to analyse the appropriate usability evaluation methods. 102 articles related to usability evaluation method from year 1995 to 2017 have been views and read to find the usability evaluation methods that can be used when evaluating academic website. The sources get from ACM Digital library, Springer Link, IEEE, and Google Scholar. From the study, observational, think-aloud, usability testing, interviews, eye-tracking, survey and questionnaires is more suitable to use if the website already deliver and used by the user or the development of the website is at the final stage. Expert evaluation no need for the evaluation anymore. But, if the website still in prototype process or in progress of development or design, expert evaluation is needed. In the other hand, from the analysis, for the end user evaluation, questionnaire is a preferred methods used to evaluate the website, followed by user testing and survey. While Heuristic evaluation was preferred method for expert evaluation however, the most recent method used is cognitive walkthrough.