The number and range of organisations developing a Web site is growing rapidly. Many of these Web sites are developed in‐houseeven though the skills and resources required for developing a successful site may not be available. It is argued that some of the limitations in terms of resources and skills inherent in the small‐scale in‐house development environment can be overcome through the adoption of an informal Web site development model and suitable usability methods. Presents an informal development model synthesised from a review of development case studies and published Web research literature. This model identifies the main stages and tasks of development. A review of information gathering and usability methods currently being employed is integrated into the model. The importance of understanding user and information provider needs is discussed. A number of common usability methods are then examined in greater detail. The appropriateness of the model and methods for the small‐scale in‐house development environment is considered.

Developing usable Web sites : a review and model

The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been argued to fundamentally reshape economic conditions and business practices of firms. It is seen as a promoter of rapid internationalisation of companies, particularly small and medium enterprises. In the aftermath of the burst of the electronic-bubble business practitioners and academics look with scrutiny on successful web-strategies, relevant dimensions of online-success and try to identify viable website practices which enable long-term rewards. The literature offers a rather patchy pattern for successful web-strategies and consumer perspectives on what is expected from websites is hardly available. Within this paper, we introduce the dimension “web-empowerment”. This is a multidimensional construct comprising of consumer views on various dimensions of relevant and successful websites. The web-empowerment scale is based on a large sample from Austria, and developed according to scale development procedures. The relevance of this construct and practical issues in the context of a cross-country sample of SME’s is empirically examined. The paper concludes by offering implications for SME practitioners and for research.

Empowerment of SME websites-Development of a web-empowerment scale and preliminary evidence

There have been many attempts to evaluate Web spaces on the basis of the information that they provide, their form or functionality, or even the importance given to each of them by the Web itself. The indicators that have been developed for this purpose fall into two groups: those based on the study of a Web space's formal characteristics, and those related to its link structure. In this study we examine most of the webometric indicators that have been proposed in the literature together with others of our own design by applying them to a set of thematically related Web spaces and analyzing the relationships between the different indicators.

Comparative analysis of webometric measurements in thematic environments

Although studies have linked culture to online user preferences and performance, few communication researchers have recognized the impact of culture on online information design and usability. It is important to ask if people are better able to use and prefer Web sites created by designers from their own culture. We propose that to improve computer-mediated communication, Web site design should accommodate culturally diverse user groups. First, a body of research is presented that aligns East Asian cultures with more holistic cognitive styles and Western cultures with more analytical cognitive styles. Building on this contrast, a theory of cultural cognitive design is proposed as a means of understanding how cognitive styles that develop under the influence of culture lead to different ways of designing and organizing information for the Web.

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THE INFLUENCE OF HOLISTIC AND ANALYTIC COGNITIVE STYLES ON ONLINE INFORMATION DESIGN: Toward a communication theory of cultural cognitive design

This paper presents a strategy for the design and organization of materials for Web-based instruction (WBI) founded upon cognitive modeling for the identification and organization of the major concepts in the domain of interest, based upon the Pathfinder paradigm The original purpose of the Pathfinder paradigm was to model aspects of human semantic (associative) memory A brief introduction to the Pathfinder paradigm is presented, and the rationale for its use in WBI is discussed The development of this paradigm for WBI, in the context of eliciting and representing knowledge from domain experts, and its use in a pilot study is described The domain used for the pilot study was the A* search algorithm, embedded within an introductory course in artificial intelligence Assessment of the paradigm is also discussed, and preliminary methods are applied to the pilot study

Foundational Aspects of Student-Controlled Learning: A Paradigm for Design, Development, and Assessment Appropriate for Web-Based Instruction

Since 1995, the World Wide Web has grown exponentially, with thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations developing and posting home pages. Some companies and organizations invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing highly artistic and visually-pleasing pages only to discover that their users become lost when navigating their site, have trouble reading the on-screen text and cannot find the information they seek. Consequently, users never return to their Web site. While numerous authors provide HTML tagging guidelines for developing Web pages, few authors have provided research-based guidelines from information design, interface design, hypertext, legibility and related research. To make Web pages more effective, developers can turn to (1) communication science-based guidelines for enhancing Web site design, and (2) formative evaluation methods. In our presentation, we outline a formative evaluation methodology to help Web page authors improve their Web pages, and illustrate the process with findings from our Web design research that began in 1994.

M. Muraski

Papers

A formative evaluation method for designing WWW sites