Renuka Nagpal

Usability evaluation of website using combined weighted method: fuzzy AHP and entropy approach

The usability of the website is a topic of great interest for researchers. The fuzzy MCDM approaches are widely adapted to measure and rank the usability of the website. These measures incorporate human input towards website are subjective in nature. Along with these measures, design dimension and other support features that encourage the user to reach desired information in stipulated time are equally important and should be incorporated in the proposed metric. These functions are objective in nature and hence suitable mathematical model or formulae can be used to evaluate its crisp value. In this paper a novel metric is proposed integrating objective and subjective approach, evaluating usability using fuzzy AHP and entropy method respectively. The proposed metric can be considered more accurate and complete as it includes expert input, experience of end user, design dimension and support features.

Designing metrics for caching techniques for dynamic web site

Today a major drift is observed from static website to dynamic websites. The dynamic websites deliver the customized contents to their users. These websites cover a wide spectrum of applications which largely vary in its content, configuration and volume of traffic. The popular metrics designed to evaluate a dynamic website are response time, user satisfaction, performance, scalability, usability personalization, reliability, reusability and security. But for dynamic website delivery, update, consistency maintenance are main hurdles. To overcome them and to serve and deliver the contents efficiently for dynamic website researchers have proposed several caching mechanisms with an aim to reduce the construction overhead to improve the response time as well as reusability of its contents. A great research has been performed on various aspects of caching. Based on these the caching techniques are classified depending on its location, content, replacement, replication and updation strategy and many more. A caching technique can be suitable for one website and may not be effective for other website, depending upon the configuration, content and application of website one should choose the suitable caching technique. Thus a need of designing a set of metrics on which these caching techniques can be evaluated is much required. In this paper we will study about the classification of caching techniques and then discuss the issues related to caching and various criteria on which metrics are needed to be designed to evaluate the effectiveness of caching techniques.

Mobile Applications Usability Parameters: Taking an Insight View

Nowadays, mobiles are like the general purpose computers with inbuilt sensors, constant access to Internet and a huge variety of applications. Different applications are categorized in such a way that they can perform their task in the best possible manner. Usability of mobile applications is the ability of an individual to use the application for its intended purpose without getting frustrated. In this paper, the attention draws on the major usability factors of different applications. After finding out the factors, we are trying to give the brief introduction of various methodologies used to rank the factors and the structural relationships among these parameters are modeled. Major techniques among them are interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach, analytical hierarchal approach (AHP) and DEMETAL (decision-making trial and evaluation technique). These methodologies are used to identify parameters affecting mobile applications, and the structural relationships between these parameters are modeled.

Task based effectiveness evaluation of educational institute websites

Websites is considered as a mode of communication by an organization through the virtual environment. To make this communication effective one need to identify the stakeholders and understand their behavior online. In order to achieve this the users were given a series of task scenarios and the analysis was done to gauge the effectiveness of website. The idea is to see whether the given website actually helps the end user to make a better decision for selecting an institute at the time of admission. The task scenarios were designed realistically, i.e., typically how people actually look into the system when they try to select an educational institute. In the current study the effectiveness of website for institute is evaluated on the basis of task success rate and task completion time.

Navigational Complexity Metrics of a Website

Navigation is the ease with which user traverses through a website while searching for information. The smooth is the navigation, the better are the chances of finding our concerned piece of information. Hence, it can be considered as an important parameter that contributes to the usability of the website. There are several factors that enhance the complexity of navigation of website. The important ones are website structural complexity, broken links, path length, maximum depth, etc. In this study, navigational complexity of seven websites is evaluated and compared on these parameters.