Integrated Usability Evaluation Framework for University Websites

Abstract

The importance of usability of websites in this contemporary era of information communication by universities and other allied academic institutions worldwide is very crucial. This has necessitated the urge and drive for usable websites to be developed by these institutions in order to improve ease of use. However, the need to measure usability of websites effectively have also prompted many researchers to develop different usability evaluation model. Even though there are numerous research efforts in this direction, there is still no universally acceptable usability evaluation model. In this paper, a framework based on integration of a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach with an artificial intelligence technique is being proposed to effectively evaluate university websites usability. The criteria used are; speed, navigation, ease of use, content, accessibility, aesthetic, and security. Thus a new model incorporating fuzzy analytical processing with artificial neural network is proposed.