Mission
This research group consists of undergraduate and graduate students from many disciplines and has four broad goals:
- To assess design features of electronically delivered information (e.g., Web pages and Web sites) by conducting Internet-based research.
- To further develop and document a toolkit (WebLab UX) to support such work.
- To refine methodologies for valid and reliable studies administered through the internet.
- To seek funding to support expansion of WebLab-UX so that it can be used by usability experts, researchers, and other stakeholders on their own Web sites in order to study specific variables of interest.
We maintain that if we are to understand how users interact with Web pages in their own environments (at 2 a.m. eating pizza in their den), then we must test users remotely through the Internet interacting with different designs (e.g., different link wording, layout, site structure). With such research we can also examine the effect of design decisions with users accessing information on a variety of different platforms.
Conducting research of real users interacting with alternative information designs is not an easy task. Hence, the group has been developing a WebLab UX (a software toolkit) that can dynamically generate alternative planned site designs, randomly assign participants to a condition, generate surveys, and collect data (about perceptions and comprehension) as well as structured log file data. The structured log file data is an important concept in that identifying an individual user is virtually impossible with standard server log files. The toolkit not only facilitates the design and delivery of a study, but the collection of all data types so that they can be compared in a way that they can inform each other.
The group is currently working on refining WebLab UX and on analyzing the results of its most recent studiy to assess six alternative designs of a Web site. This research group has successfully conducted Internet-based studies; analyzed data to find the effect of manipulations of Web site features on comprehension, behavior, and perceptions; and presented results at conferences, in proceedings, and in refereed articles (see Publications and Presentations).