Effect of Information Architecture on the Usability of a University Website

Abstract

A well-planned information architecture (IA) of a website can enhance the end users' efficiency, learnability, controllability and intention to revisit the site. Its significance is even more in the context of academic websites where the generation, management, and distribution of information are among the major activities. However, it remains a neglected issue as designers of academic websites have overlooked the important aspect of ‘intuitive user navigation' and focused primarily on its ‘look and feel.' Thus, the current study aims to analyze and compare the effectiveness of information architectural designs of some randomly selected university websites of Punjab (India) through a usability testing technique. For this purpose, the performance metric measured was the information seeking time. The usability session of each subject was captured through Camtasia Studio software. The findings of this study highlight the shortcomings of presently designed academic websites which adversely affect the usability of a website.

Impact of University Website Usability on Satisfaction: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach

“…In particular, they were pleased with the ‘content and navigation (ease of use)’ features of the websites but were discontent with the ‘design of the websites’. Singla and Aggarwal (2020) found that design and navigation of academic websites are not given much importance which affected the websites adversely. Mentes and Turan (2012) had studied the usability of Namik Kemal University’s website with the use of WAMMI scale and it was found that website usability is positively associated with attractiveness, helpfulness, efficiency and learnability.…”

Evaluación de la usabilidad con herramientas automatizadas del mapa curricular web de un programa educativo del nivel superior.

“…ingreso y egreso, las competencias documentadas por ciclos, el plan de estudios, el personal académico, tecnologías utilizadas o que se verán en el transcurso de la carrera y su mapa curricular (Universidad-Politécnica-de-Victoria, 2023). El diseño del mapa curricular es uno de los aspectos que hace que se vea muy útil, es por esto que al desarrollar un currículo se necesita equilibrar las habilidades de producción y codificación, así como el uso de herramientas para su desarrollo en conjunto con el diseño visual (Kuo et al, 2021;Singla & Aggarwal, 2020).…”