Usability testing on PTPL group of colleges website / Juliana Mohd Misnan

PTPL is a private college that provide education at certificate and diploma level in information technology, engineering, business, hospitality, culinary art and health sciences. Like any other higher education institutions, PTPL have a website to facilitate users to obtain information relating to their college. The website used to attract funding from other places and increase the popularity of institutions around the world and provide a way to present their image on the Internet. To ensure this goal is achieved, a website should be able to meet the user needs, easy to use, effective and enjoyable. Usability is the most important for the website because user will leave the website if it difficult to use. However, base on preliminary study conducted with some users, the information contained in PTPL Group of Colleges website is incomplete and not constantly updated. Furthermore, usability testing has not been conducted since the early development of this website. Therefore, the main purpose of the project is to investigate the usability problems of PTPL Group of Colleges website and suggest the design improvement for PTPL Group of Colleges website based on the identified problems. This project focuses on PTPL Shah Alam. To fulfil this purpose, usability testing was conducted on six (6) participants where they were interviewed and performed a particular task to identify problem on the website. The results show that the information contained in the website is not updated and incomplete. The interface design of the website is unorganized and unattractive. The participants also need to go through many steps to get information. The result of this project would assist PTPL College to identify usability problems that occur in their website. It also can help web designer to develop a good website and provide a better user experience among the users. For future project, the scope of the project can be extended to other PTPL branches and involves participants from all over Malaysia because users with different backgrounds will have different experiences and needs.