A heuristic design toolkit for web conferencing software based on self-determination theory

Abstract

Web conferencing software can help workers work remotely and provide them with greater flexibility and autonomy. However, existing web conferencing software faces certain technical, functional, and design-related limitations. These problems lead to a less than ideal user experience and consequently result in a lack of intrinsic motivation on the part of the user. To improve this situation, we conducted a System Literature Review (SLR) to integrate and summarize the principles proposed in the literature and ultimately developed a heuristic design toolkit for web conferencing software based on self-determination theory. This toolkit contains a total of 15 principles corresponding to autonomy, competence and relatedness. Through heuristic and expert evaluations, we verified that the toolkit is effective in identifying problems. Therefore, the results of this research can help designers to develop web conferencing software and evaluate its usability in order to address the usability issues of the software and to satisfy the basic psychological needs of the users, thus enhancing users intrinsic motivation to use the web conferencing software.