inversini enter2009(p35)
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Cultural Tourism Usability. The case of Visit BathTRANSCRIPT
CULTURAL DESTINATION USABILITY: THE CASE OF VISIT BATH
Alessandro Inversiniwebatelier.netUniversity of Lugano, [email protected]
Lorenzo CantoniNewMinE LabUniversity of Lugano, [email protected]
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Agenda• Usability and Tourism• Methodology: MiLE+• Usability kit & validation• VisitBath.co.uk usability kit•VisitBath.co.uk analysis• Validation• Conclusions
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Usability and Tourism (1)• ISO defines usability as “the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments”.
(ISO 9241) • Cantoni and Tardini, 2006: usability is "the adequacy of contents/functionalities (pillar I [of the Website Communication Model - WCM]) and accessibility tools (pillar II), between themselves and with respect to the users (pillar IV) and the relevant context (world). However, this adequacy has to be measured taking into consideration the goals of people who commission, project, develop, promote and run the website (pillar III)”
(Cantoni & Tardini, 2006)• Two main categories of methods:
• usability inspection methods• empirical testing
•Tourism is a very interesting field for usability experts because of the intrinsic multi-domain characteristics and the importance of the ICT.
(Buhalis, 2003)• Cultural tourism offers the interplay between tourism and cultural heritage assets
(McKercher and du Cross, 2002)
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Usability and Tourism (2)• One of the main purpose of a DMO website is to attract more consumers and to increase visits to the destination
(Shanshan et al., 2007)
• DMO websites can promote destination products (WTOBC, 2000)
•DMO websites should act as a bridge in promoting services and products and communicate with the market (gives visibility to third party websites)(Pike, 2005)
• The quality of its online communication should be very high; otherwise, as explained by some empirical study, a huge amount of users might leave the website because of usability problems.
(e.g. Souze et al., 2000)
•Good website usability normally leads to a good website performance; therefore usability performance is a key success factor for a website.(Douglas and Mills, 2004; Nielsen, 2003)
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MiLE +•MiLE +: Milano Lugano Evaluation Method
• Characteristics• Usability Kit
• User Profiles • Goals • Tasks• Heuristics• User Experince Indicators
•Evaluations • scenario-based user-experience evaluation, • scenario-based heuristic evaluation, • scenario-based user-testing.
•Usages analysis
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Usability Kit & Validation•Usability kit Creation
•Usages Analysis•Book online: eight different user paths for 222.149 user sessions •Where to Stay: five different user paths in 161.500 user sessions •Things To do: four different user paths in 157.596 user sessions
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usability Kit• Scenarios: an example
• Heuristics • Content • Graphic • Navigation
S1 Title: Decide to Visit Bath SR4
USER PROFILE USER1
This first user profile, Paul, is male, and is 45 years old. He accesses the website from home during the evening. His connection speed is medium (low speed ADSL). He is not familiar with the computer and the Internet, so some icons or conventions on the web do not have any meanings for him. However he has strong domain knowledge (tourism and cultural tourism). He is motivated to reach his goals while visiting the web site.
GOAL G1. To obtain destination’s information
TASKS T1.1 Find the city overview T1.2 Find the city history T1.3 Find information on how to get there by car T1.4 Find information on how to get there by train T1.5 Find information on how to get there by plain T1.6 Find detailed map of attractions T1.7 Find deals for visiting the attractions T1.8 Find city internal transportation
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usability Results•Goal Rating (1 to 5 scale)
Id Goal Rating
G1 Obtain destination information 3.9
G2 Obtain attractions information 3.6
G3 Obtain events information 3.6
G4 Find and Book an hotel 3
G5 Obtain information about groups travels 3.7
G6 Obtain information about new activities 3.5
G7 Shop online 2.8
G8 Obtain information eating & drinking 3.5
G9 Obtain and download maps and guides 3.3
G10 Obtain information about guided tours 3.5
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usability Results•Search results organization and representation
•Number of tasks affected by the problem: 6 (T2.1, T3.1, T4.1, T4.2, T6.2, T8.1).
•Task: Find the list of attractions
• Usability issues about accuracy and conciseness.
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usability Results• Depth anticipation
•Number of tasks affected by this problem: 5 (T1.7, T2.12, T2.13, T3.1, T3.8).
• Task: Book a ticket online
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usability Results• Shop Section
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VisitBath.co.uk - Usages Analyis•Usability analysis, issues verification
• Search results are one of the major drivers for information-seeking activities in the website, according to the log files, 5.24% of the users use the internal search engine to access information.
• Relevant issues similar to Treats / Risks / Vulnerability / Assessment
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Conclusions• VisitBath.co.uk appears to be a high quality website.
• It suffers from problems that are related to the nature of a data-driven website, such as the search engine and the results display as well as the depth anticipation. • Few usability issues (here three have been presented), which could be classified as major problems, and there was one critical issue that could be classified as a significant problem. • The shop section appeared as one of the most important usability issues
•Importance of Usages to validate• Usability Kit• Usability results
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