Evaluating Design Patterns of Commercial Web Applications using Net Easy Score

Abstract

Web interface design patterns provide solutions to recurring design problems. Many design patterns use various techniques, which have been proven to be significantly different, to solve the same design problem. Normally, web designers do not know whether users would be satisfied with their chosen choice until near or at the end of the web development process. To obtain user feedback, users are usually asked to interact with a web prototype or the finished web and give their opinion through standardized questionnaires. Net Promoter Score is one of such questionnaires. This scale categorizes users' responses into promoters and detractors, which makes it easier for companies to understand user satisfaction towards their web. To enable the designers to obtain user feedback early in the design stage, Net Easy Score, a new metric based on Net Promoter Score, was proposed. With Net Easy Score (NES), ease-of-use scores on different design patterns will be divided into a positive and a negative group. The NES is a difference between percentages of positive responses and negative ones. This study examined ease-of-use scores on design patterns for five common tasks in commercial web applications. Results showed that NES and mean ease- of-use score were significantly correlated with an r of 0.965 (p < .000). Also, ranking the average ease-of-use scores and NES revealed the same design patterns identified as the best and the worst ones, which was consistent with the easiest-to-use design patterns voted by participants.