Description
WebLabUX is a software tool that allows web site developers and researchers to remotely test the effectiveness of different web site designs by combining two data sources: users' survey responses and their navigational patterns. Specifically, WebLabUX helps web stakeholders and researchers assess web site users' perceptions, comprehension, and navigational behavior as users interact with variations of different web site designs. The results of the remote studies can be used to improve the design of informational web sites as well as contribute to the existing theories of good design.

What distinguishes WebLabUX from other web analytics software?
WebLabUX's focuses on browsing behavior and perceptual responses, not on getting users to convert from one kind of user to another (e.g., measuring shopping check out behavior or registration behavior). With WebLabUX, web stakeholders can determine whether there is a relationship between users' navigational behavior and perceptual responses. For instance, does an increase in browsing time, pages hit, or links used relate to user perceptions or comprehension?  

Accomplishments
Between 2004-2007, WebLabUX was used to test the effectiveness of different web site designs for a half-dozen web sites. Results from remote studies performed with WebLabUX have been presented at numerous international conferences (e.g., ACM CHI, IEEE, UPA) and published in multiple journal articles. Informational web site owners, university researchers, and usability professionals have all expressed interest in using WebLabUX for their projects.

Funding for future development
We originally developed WebLabUX as a tool to support our research rather than as a product to support the design of informational web sites. We are currently seeking one year of funding to complete the development of WebLabUX such that it can be deployed and used by web site designers and stakeholders who have minimal technical skills beyond XHTML/CSS. We need to develop a user-friendly GUI front end for setting up and running experiments, improve the robustness of the toolkit by implementing a database back end, and we need to create user documentation.
Please click here to contact us regarding funding.

Detailed information on how WebLabUX functions.

Preparing Study Materials
WebLabUX allows web stakeholders to instrument a web site as well as test various designs. WebLabUX allows web site designers and instructional designers to modify a pre-existing web site or XHTML/CSS-based instructional help system by
(1) tagging dependent variables of interest (e.g., pages visited, links clicked)
(2) instantiating independent variables (e.g., variations of the content design, the navigation design, etc.)
(3) composing and inserting survey instruments
(4) setting up study protocols (e.g., when surveys appear, method for assigning readers to conditions).

Data Collection
After WebLabUX readies the study materials, users can visit the study web site from a time and place that is natural to them, and perform tasks on the web site in a natural context. As each user visits the study web site, WebLabUX can:
(1) assign visitors to conditions based on the study protocol
(2) automatically generate design variations (conditions) from a single set of source web pages (for XHTML/CSS or PHP-based web sites only)
(3) deliver surveys and record results
(4) track user's navigational behavior (e.g., specific links or buttons clicked, page requested, referring page, time on page)
(5) link survey results to navigational behavior for each visitor
(6) support longitudinal studies requiring repeated visits to or across study-sections of a web site
(7) create data files that can be easily exported into Excel, SPSS, R, or other popular packages.

Added Benefits

• WebLabUX accomplishes the activities listed above in an unobtrusive manner by using server-side scripting and instrumented web pages. The developer of a web site instruments the pages by adding tags to the web pages.
• Because WebLabUX does not require users in a study to download or install any special software on their computers (as is the case with some commercially available tools), the mechanisms that handle the remote usability study are invisible to the web site’s users.
• WebLabUX also includes a set of post-processing tools that detect and flag unexpected user behavior or behaviors that violate study protocols. These scripts allow the web design and evaluation team to determine, for instance, if users have opened multiple web browser windows to refer back to specific pages while taking surveys and comprehension tests.
• WebLabUX supports the web design team in understanding the users of their web site. We maintain that assessing actual users of a web site in their own environments brings in all of the complexities of the natural world in which users function (e.g., differing computing platforms, connection speeds, and browsers; and varying types of participants with different levels of motivation, interest, topic familiarity, and computer expertise) and that this is a boon to the development of user-appropriate web sites and ecologically valid.