Abstract—Usability of a website used to be of very little or no weight at all for the company or academe it represents. With the changing time and increase of Internet users, usability is now a major consideration as website, though virtual, plays an important role for the company or university it represents. This study illustrates the process of assessing a university website. The value of doing usability testing and how it enriches the user experience is presented. Learning about the user and their satisfaction in all aspects of the website is learned through the testing process. A fivephased usability testing methodology is discussed that resulted into qualitative and quantitative data for the researchers study. These data were transformed into information through analysis in accordance to the type of data collected. These findings were then interpreted into concrete website usability assessment. The result showed that the methodology chosen and the test plan it produced was able to output website usability problems that can help assess and greatly improve a university website’s usability. Lastly, study recommendations were presented being that usability should be a never ending endeavor for a userconcerned university.

Index Terms—human computer interaction, user-centered evaluation, usability testing, user satisfaction, web usability, user-centered design

Cite: Hanan T. Basher, Dawn Mary Kristine C. Gacus, Rachell P. Mingo, and Aloha May H. Ambe, "A User-Centered Evaluation of a University Website," Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 210-216, September 2014. doi: 10.12720/jiii.2.3.210-216