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Kitajima, Blackmon, Polson, & Lewis (2002)

Kitajima, M., Blackmon, M.H., Polson, P.G. & Lewis, C. (2002). Automated Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web (AutoCWW). A position paper presented at the workshop on Automatically Evaluating the Usability of Web Sites in CHI'2002.

 

Automated Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web (AutoCWW)

In this paper, I describe a website usability inspection method, the Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web (CWW), and a plan to automate it (AutoCWW). The CWW (Blackmon, Polson, Kitajima, & Lewis, 2002) is a transformation of the Cognitive Walkthrough (CW), a model-based usability inspection method that has proven useful in designing applications that support use by exploration. The CWW is superior for evaluating how well websites support users' navigation and information search tasks, having the following features:

  • Simulates user's web navigation using a cognitive model, CoLiDeS.
  • Uses contextually rich descriptions of user goals (100-200 words long) incorporating more information about users' understanding of their tasks and underlying motivation.
  • Examines a set of goals to confirm each goal is directed to the page that the developer intends.
  • Uses psychologically valid user's semantic knowledge space, LSA, to predict user's link selection.
  • Can select most appropriate one from a number of semantic knowledge spaces, depending on the user and his/her goal.
  • Discovers problematic headings and links using a set of criteria.
  • Supports incremental website design by having the analyst evaluate website page by page.
  • Can be integrated into website design process by developing AutoCWW, an automated version of CWW.

 

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