Introduction
Preliminary case study to enhance the usability of an existing religious website– Experiment compare original and enhanced site– Users’ evaluation of sites
Sites dealing with religion and spirituality– Created by believers with little experience due to
low financial profit by designers– Possible high customer base
Background
Few resources on spiritual/religious websites– View users ethnographically like elderly or
disabled– Community design and social interaction– E-commerce– Cognitive factors
Community Design / Social Interaction
Important to developing web-based community of believers
– Require honest social interaction– Share personal experiences– Facilitate empathy– Privacy and trust
Bob’s ACL Bulletin Board– Shared common injury needing rehabilitation– Common love of sports– Need for empathy – frustrated and depressed
Community Design / Social Interaction
Four-components of design criteria for online social interaction systems (Girgensohn and Lee)
– Common ground Shared understandings among collaborators Use of personal profiles
– Awareness Good orientation and navigational cues Differentiate unread/new posts from old
– Enablers Opinion polls, rating systems, or discussion boards to self-determine
group’s course of action– Place-making
Discussion board policies may emerge over time...self regulating
E-Commerce
Spiritual and religious organizations are entering the world of online business
Profitability not necessarily a goal of spiritual websites, but a strong business model allows flexibility services offered
Many factors contribute to the success and failure on an online business
Traditional retail activities may not be the same online
E-Commerce
Fong presents a model of how fundamental personnel work together in an online businessMarketing, content, transactions, customer service
– Attract customers into the primary site Advertising via mailings, emails, banners on other sites Sales > temporarily change of information on the site
– Interact – customers interest in the information on the site Static or dynamic information
– Act – capturing and processing an order Shopping carts, order tracking, taxes, shipping, payments
– React – customer service Help desk or webmaster email
E-Commerce
Customer assurance– Small unknown online businesses at a disadvantage
Methods – Assurance protocol
Timely acknowledgement of transaction by seller Known trusted third party vouches for trustworthiness of small
business
– Umbrella assurance Known entity acts as a host for the small business
Cognitive Factors
Website developers should utilize a user-centered design process
– Meaningful items vs. unfamiliar jargon– Concrete words vs. abstract words– Retrieval cues and standardization
Humans use known problem solving strategies and – Can block solving a problem by using wrong interaction– Design should allow for correction without penalty
Seacoast Ministries Case Study
Local Christian group – Seacoastministries.org
Educational materials for churches Community interaction Training for custom certifications
Design Goals
Look and feel– “Wow”– “sea coast” motif– Not “business-like” or “too religious”
Clearer navigation Accessible to large demographic (many
types of users) Easily maintainable and modifiable
Cascading Style Sheets
Simpler, more manageable HTML code Documents look good at any resolution Finer and more predictable control over presentation Define the look of a site in one place, modify whole
site by changing just one file Older browsers can still see pages People with disabilities have better access Simple syntax – uses a number of English keywords
to specify the names of various style properties
Experimental Setup
Each site was evaluated to determine how long it took users to complete a given task.
Participants were asked to perform the same five tasks for each site.
Times for each task were recorded. Tasks were chosen to represent typical
information of interest to most users.
Experimental Setup
Participants also responded to a questionnaire about each site.
The questionnaire attempted to measure user satisfaction using several Likert scales.
Results
Comparison of Average Task Completion Times
0.0
20.0
40.0
60.0
80.0
100.0
120.0
1 2 3 4 5
Task
Ave
rage
Tim
e (m
s)
.
Original Site
Modified Site
How much does it cost to receive a year's subscription of the Baileys' newsletter? What telephone number should be called to reach Seacoast Ministries?
Results
Comparison of Satisfaction Survey[1 = Strongly Agree, 4 = Strongly Disagree]
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Question
Res
pons
e
e
Original Site
Modified Site
This website provides enough information about the services offered. The purpose of this website is always clear to me.
Remarks
Seacoast Ministries “requested” that specific design features be included.– Dealt primarily with look-and-feel– Time-consuming to implement
Two design considerations had to be omitted:– Empathic communities– E-commerce
Conclusions
Modified site was successful in decreasing users’ times to complete tasks (easier navigation)
Users felt that modified site made information accessible and clear (consistent design)
Anecdotally, users generally felt that the modified site was more aesthetically pleasing.
References
Andrews, D. C. Computer Supported Cooperative Work Audience-specific online community design: Supporting community and building social capital. Communications of the ACM, 45, 4, (2002), 64-68.
Badros, G. J., Borning, A., Marriott, K., and Stuckey, P. Constraint cascading style sheets for the Web. Proc. of the 12th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology , ACM Press, (Nov 1999), 73-82.
Fong, S. and Se-Lang, C. Modeling personnel and roles for electronic commerce retail. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGCPR conference on Computer personnel research. (April 2000), 45-53.
Girgensohn, A. and Lee, A. Making web sites be places for social interaction Proc. of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. New Orleans, LA, (2002), 136-145.
Hewett, T. T. Tutorial: Cognitive factors in design: overview and some implications for design. Proc. of the 5th conference on Creativity & cognition C&C '05. ACM Press, (April 2005), 318-321.
Lie, H. W. and Saarela, J. Multipurpose Web publishing using HTML, XML, and CSS. Communications of the ACM, 42, 10, (1999), 95-101.
Lyon, G. E. Assurance protocols and small Web retailers. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing, 2, (March 2000), 904-908.
Preece, J. Empathic communities: reaching out across the Web. Interactions, 5, 2, ACM Press (1998), 32-43. Andrews, D. C. Audience-specific online community design: Supporting community and building social capital. Communications of the ACM, 45, 4, (2002), 64-68.
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