Using protocol analysis to understand the effects of web site design on consumer purchase behaviors

Association for Information Systems - 26th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2005: Forever New Frontiers937-95

A User-Centered Perspective on Information Technologies in Museums

Information Technology (IT) has been put forth as a reasonable way to sustain visitor interest and encourage visit repetition in museums. Therefore, IT is becoming more common in museum settings and professionals express their need for more information about how their visitors interact with these systems. This dissertation is an attempt to answer this call. We propose three essays that deal with different aspects of museums and IT from a user-centered perspective. The first essay is an attempt to determine with a free simulation experiment how IT and more particularly websites can arouse interest for museological content. The second essay relies on a field study to analyze the influence of IT on affective and cognitive reactions during a museum visit, namely perceived enjoyment, perceived authenticity and learning. In the third essay, we use focus groups and questionnaires to explore visitor expectations towards a phenomenological experience and the role played by IT in visitor experience of the past. This dissertation contributes to research by (1) advancing our knowledge of IT dedicated to the cultural heritage area, and (2) identifying and understanding visitor perceptions of hedonic systems. By proposing a set of key dimensions that could be used for IT evaluation in the cultural heritage, this dissertation also offers actionable advices to museum professionals

Investigating good usability consistency within and across the South African super 14 rugby franchise web sites

This study investigates the usability of the South African Super 14 Rugby franchise web sites. Web site usability is a measure of a web site user’s experience when visiting a web site. A web site user’s experience will determine how well a web site’s goals are achieved. The relevant web site goals are, having as many visitors as possible, both unique visitors and repeat visitors, and ensuring that those visitors stay on the web site for as long as possible. This study uses data generation method triangulation to enhance the validity of the findings. The data generation methods are an e-mail questionnaire survey and an expert group consensus method called the Delphi Method. This study shows that within each web site and across all five web sites, there is poor usability consistency. Management guidelines and recommendations for improvements to these web sites are presented, so that the web site goals can be achieved.Computer ScienceM.Sc. (Information Systems