Site Navigation Research Articles

Linking card sorting to browsing performance – are congruent municipal websites more efficient to use?

ABSTRACTCard sorting is a method for eliciting mental models and is frequently used for creating efficient website navigation structures. The present studies set out to validate card sorting by linking browsing performance to the degree of match between the mental model and the navigation structure. First, a card sorting study was conducted (n = 27) to elicit users’ mental model of municipal websites. Second, performance was measured for a number of search tasks with varying degrees of congruence with users’ mental model (n = 50). Analysis by linear mixed-effect models suggests that the match between mental model and website structure has no effect on browsing performance. We discuss possible reasons and consequences of the failure to validate card sorting for designing navigation structures of informational websites.

Investigating Procedures for Intuitive GUI design of Indian E-Commerce shopping sites

This work is all about finding procedures to design intuitive e-commerce shopping websites in India by mapping existing GUI with end user's mental model and behavioral pattern to improve website structure, navigation and interaction. We considered 7 factors, viz. simplicity, readability, learnability, navigability, interactivity, supportability and acceptability for the same. The first three are related to web structure, navigability is related to website navigation and the last three are related to website interaction. Considering these factors, a questionnaire of 27 questions and 10 tasks are designed. Here we have captured the data by conducting a survey of 318 participants. Participants' Demographic data is analyzed and they are categorized into three groups, viz. Beginners, intermediates and experts. We found 66 beginners, 179 intermediates and 73 experts. Mental model for all these groups are formed by referring results of survey in which various statistical measures are applied on Likert score of survey. Task based user testing is done while 10 tasks were being performed by 9 participants and behavioral patterns were recorded. These mental models and behavioral patterns are mapped with GUI of existing e-commerce shopping websites to get findings which helped further to form procedures or design guidelines. These procedures can be used to design intuitive GUI for Indian e-commerce websites.

Interoperative Biopsy Site Relocalization in Endoluminal Surgery.

Barrett's oesophagus, a premalignant condition of the oesophagus has been on a rise in the recent years. The standard diagnostic protocol for Barrett's involves obtaining biopsies at suspicious regions along the oesophagus. The localization and tracking of these biopsy sites "interoperatively" poses a significant challenge for providing targeted treatments and tracking disease progression. This paper proposes an approach to provide guided navigation and relocalization of the biopsy sites using an electromagnetic tracking system. The characteristic of our approach over existing ones is the integration of an electromagnetic sensor at the flexible endoscope tip, so that the endoscopic camera depth inside the oesophagus can be computed in real time, allowing to retrieve and display an image from a previous exploration at the same depth. We first describe our system setup and methodology for interoperative registration. We then propose three incremental experiments of our approach. First, on synthetic data with realistic noise model to analyze the error bounds of our system. The second on in vivo pig data using an optical tracking system to provide a pseudo ground truth. Accuracy results obtained were consistent with the synthetic experiments despite uncertainty introduced due to breathing motion, and remain inside acceptable error margin according to medical experts. Finally, a third experiment designed using data from pigs to simulate a real task of biopsy site relocalization, and evaluated by ten gastro-intestinal experts. It clearly demonstrated the benefit of our system toward assisted guidance by improving the biopsy site retrieval rate from 47.5% to 94%.

Abstract 18760: Evaluation of a Web-based Cardiac Pain Knowledge Dissemination Platform Fueled by Social Media

Introduction: The prevalence of persistent cardiac pain-related conditions is on the rise. Increasingly prevalent forms of persistent cardiac pain include refractory angina, cardiac syndrome X and functional cardiac pain syndromes. Our aim was to disseminate a web-based, multi-media resource centre, CardiacPain.Net, as a prototype for large-scale knowledge dissemination and educational outreach in partnership with Elsevier. Methods: Multi-media design features included open access published resources, narrated video, roundtable discussions, downloadable fact sheets, and an asynchronous discussion forum. Accreditation for continuing medical education (Canada and United States) was secured to maximize incentive for end-user uptake. Dissemination strategies included opt-in email blasts to Elsevier subscribers (n= 27,000) every 3 months, e-banner advertising, and mass social media via Twitter. Standard dissemination metrics included total site visits and components visited and downloaded. Customized metrics included unique and return visitor rates, bounce rate, stream views, and geo-targeting. All metrics were analyzed in aggregate and examined for outliers and monthly trends. Interrupted time series analysis with an autoregressive structure was used to examine immediate impact of social media on 12-month dissemination metrics. Results: CardiacPain.Net reached end users in 132 countries across 5 continents. A total of 7,066 unique visitors were engaged and resources were viewed and downloaded 13,629 times. The monthly return visitor and bounce rates were 30% and 50%, respectively. Average time spent on multi-media presentations was 14.5 minutes. Twitter constituted 66% of all total social media engagement; 62% of Twitter users were female. Interrupted time series analyses revealed that Twitter outreach significantly increased end user sessions, number of users, and page views (p< 0.001). Twitter did not affect proportion of new users monthly or website navigation behavior. Conclusions: Results suggest that as a large-scale knowledge dissemination and online cardiac educational outreach prototype, CardiacPain.Net is far reaching and capable of sustained engagement of an international-scale audience.

Validity and usability of a professional association’s web-based knowledge translation portal: American Physical Therapy Association’s PTNow.org

BackgroundPTNow.org is an evidence-based, on-line portal created by a professional membership association to promote use of evidence in practice and to help decrease unwarranted variation in practice. The site contains synthesis documents designed to promote efficient clinical reasoning. These documents were written and peer-reviewed by teams of content experts and master clinicians. The purpose of this paper is to report on the content and construct validity as well as usability of the site.MethodsPhysical therapist participants used clinical summaries (available in 3 formats--as a full summary with hyperlinks, “quick takes” with hyperlinks, and a portable two-page version) on the PTNow.org site to answer knowledge acquisition and clinical reasoning questions related to four patient scenarios. They also responded to questions about ease of use related to website navigation and about format and completeness of information using a 1–5 Likert scale. Responses were coded to reflect how participants used the site and then were summarized descriptively. Preferences for clinical summary format were analyzed using an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a Dunnett T3 post hoc analysis.ResultsSeventeen participants completed the study. Clinical relevance and completeness ratings by experienced clinicians, which were used as the measure of content validity, ranged from 3.1 to 4.6 on a 5 point scale. Construct validity based on the information on the PTNow.org site was supported for knowledge acquisition questions 66 % of the time and for clinical reasoning questions 40 % of the time. Usability ratings for the full clinical summary were 4.6 (1.2); for the quick takes, 3.5 (.98); and for the portable clinical summary, 4.0 (.45). Participants preferred the full clinical summary over the other two formats (F = 5.908, P = 0.007). One hundred percent of the participants stated that they would recommend the PTNow site to their colleagues.ConclusionPrelimary evidence supported both content validity and construct validity of knowledge acquisition, and partially supported construct validity of clinical reasoning for the clinical summaries on the PTNow.org site. Usability was supported, with users preferring the full clinical summary over the other two formats. Iterative design is ongoing.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-015-0178-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Outcomes of Destination Marketing Organization Website Navigation: The Role of Telepresence

ABSTRACTThis study explores how informative and entertaining features of destination marketing organization (DMO) websites affect a sense of telepresence, and how these features affect visitors’ evaluation of the utilitarian and hedonic performances of such websites. This study further examines how DMO websites affect visitors’ familiarity with, interest in, and knowledge about a destination and their consequent intention to visit the destination. A total of 433 responses from United States (US) Internet users were collected in an online survey. The study results suggest that informative and entertaining telepresence is crucial in DMO web performance, making a destination appear more familiar and interesting to prospective visitors. This increases the likelihood that potential tourists will plan a trip to the destination.

Information and Communication Technology and Students with Disabilities

The purpose of this research study was to identify the problems encountered by persons with physical disabilities to attend full-time studies at the University Alexander Xhuvani Elbasan. In addition, it serves to highlight the obstacles in the university environment and to provide adequate information for decision-makers at the university in order for them to be able to recognize such barriers and to carefully consider and plan the inclusion of individuals with physical disabilities in university. Subject for this study were a group of 22 students with physical disabilities, 14 (fourteen) of whom were male and 8 (eight) were female. All these students who were contacted directly have identified difficulties in benefiting applications in the information system of the university, e-learning, web-site navigability, and downloading various documents from the system etc. This paper also gives some suggestions about improvements that should be made to the information system in the university, in order to be used efficiently by persons with disabilities, academically as well as administratively. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s3p494

Affective and cognitive influence of control of navigation on cause sponsorship and non‐profit organizations

The purpose of this research is to examine how control of navigation influences cognitive and affective sponsorship responses and attitude towards the non‐profit organization in the context of corporate websites. By conducting experiments on fictitious brands and existing non‐profit organizations, this study found that control of navigation did not influence sponsorship cognition. Attitude towards the website fully mediated the influence of control of navigation on attitude towards the sponsor's brand and attitude towards the non‐profit organization. Additionally, high control of navigation in combination with high perceived fit was associated with the most positive brand attitude. These findings suggest that control of navigation defined as an external control factor is primarily an affective heuristic; in addition, the heuristic processing influences not only the sponsor's brand but also the sponsored non‐profit organization. Practically, this study suggests that the navigation of corporate websites has to be user‐friendly in order to benefit the brand and ensure neutrality of consumers' judgement of the sponsored non‐profit organization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ethnic Museum Websites, Cultural Projection, and Self-Categorization Concepts

This qualitative research features in-depth interviews along with observations of respondents' navigation of African American and Latino museum websites. Respondents self-identified as of African American, Latino, or White cultural heritage and ranged in age from the late teens to over 50. Interviewees noted the organizations' projection of their cultures to non-group members as well as to racial or ethnic group members. Respondents who interacted with the ethnic digital media also demonstrated the application of the self-categorization process, including the concepts of prototypes, norms, accessibility and fit. The authors provide suggestions for expanding dimensions of these concepts beyond the dichotomous measures typically found in the self-categorization literature. In addition, concepts from self-categorization and cultural projection theories are integrated and their usefulness to digital communication scholars is explicated. Besides these contributions to communication methodology and theory, the study also suggests practical considerations for ethnic organization website producers.

Profile-Based Summarisation for Web Site Navigation

Information systems that utilise contextual information have the potential of helping a user identify relevant information more quickly and more accurately than systems that work the same for all users and contexts. Contextual information comes in a variety of types, often derived from records of past interactions between a user and the information system. It can be individual or group based. We are focusing on the latter, harnessing the search behaviour of cohorts of users, turning it into a domain model that can then be used to assist other users of the same cohort. More specifically, we aim to explore how such a domain model is best utilised for profile-biased summarisation of documents in a navigation scenario in which such summaries can be displayed as hover text as a user moves the mouse over a link. The main motivation is to help a user find relevant documents more quickly. Given the fact that the Web in general has been studied extensively already, we focus our attention on Web sites and similar document collections. Such collections can be notoriously difficult to search or explore. The process of acquiring the domain model is not a research interest here; we simply adopt a biologically inspired method that resembles the idea of ant colony optimisation. This has been shown to work well in a variety of application areas. The model can be built in a continuous learning cycle that exploits search patterns as recorded in typical query log files. Our research explores different summarisation techniques, some of which use the domain model and some that do not. We perform task-based evaluations of these different techniques—thus of the impact of the domain model and profile-biased summarisation—in the context of Web site navigation.

Big Data and Intrusiveness: Marketing Issues

Nowadays, more and more companies have huge masses of data from multiple sources (online transactions, traces from website navigation, social networks, sensors, etc.). These data are moreover heterogeneous and volatile. This large amount of data offers tremendous opportunities in terms of knowledge and customer relationships. However, their transformation into actionable knowledge poses important challenges both technically and ethically. Through a state of the art, this paper aims to highlight the issues and challenges of Big Data for marketing. We are particularly interested in those related to customizing and boosting the real time experience of the internet customer. To what extent these practices (real-time interactions, website and customized offer based on the user profile and the navigation behavior are impacted by the Big Data?

The three dimensions of website navigability: Explication and effects

Although the navigability of digital interfaces has been long discussed as a key determinant of media effects of web use, existing scholarship has not yielded a clear conceptual understanding of navigability, nor how to measure perceived navigability as an outcome. The present paper attempts to redress both and proposes that navigability be conceptually examined along three dimensions, namely, logic of structure, clarity of structure, and clarity of target. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between‐subjects experiment (N = 128) was conducted to examine distinct contributions of these dimensions to perceptions of a nonprofit website. The results showed significant effects for logic of structure and clarity on perceived navigability, while logic of structure and content domain involvement affected attitudes toward the website.

Key Drivers of Customer Loyalty in Online Banking

1. IntroductionInternet and web design have been the most exciting developments in the field of information and communications technology in recent years. With increasing Internet access, the phenomenon of using Online Banking (or Internet banking or E-banking) services is booming greatlyOnline banking refers to the banking services provided via a secure website operated by online bank-service provider to facilitate the use of the internet as a remote banking-service delivery channel. Online banking allows bank customers with appropriate access to manage their finances with minimal inconvenience as it provides a fast and convenient way to undertake various banking transactions from home, office, or elsewhere via online banking websites (Beh Yee & Faziharudean, 2010).According to Reichheld & Schefter (2000), the high costs associated with winning new online-banking customers make it necessary for the banks to keep their current customers and make them loyal. Presently, customer loyalty in online banking sector has become a critical issue because of its great and positive impact on banks' long-term profitability. Since the competition is just a click of the mouse away, customer loyalty in online banking is very important for both and competitive reasons (Floh & Treiblmaier, 2006). Hence there is a need to understand how customer loyalty in online banking can be ensured and maintained.Customer loyalty is a concept that has been studied in a good number of researches. Previous studies have found that in online banking, service quality (or eservice quality), customer satisfaction (e-satisfaction) and customer trust (or e-trust) have direct or indirect effects on customer loyalty (or e-loyalty). However, these studies have not fully demonstrated the combined effects of these factors and their impacts on e-loyalty. Therefore, important research gaps that needs be filled still exist. Therefore, in this research, we will thoroughly investigate the effects that these factors have on e-loyalty both individually and collectively by developing and testing some relevant hypotheses. Single and multiple regression models will be fitted and used for the analyses and for testing the hypotheses developed.1. Literature Review1.1. E-Service QualityFogli (2006, p.4) defined service quality as a global judgment or attitude relating to a particular service; the customer's overall impression of the relative inferiority or superiority of the organization and its services. Service quality is a cognitive judgment. According to Lapierre et al. (1996), the concept of service quality is linked to the concepts of perceptions and expectations. Service quality perceived by the customers is the result of comparing the expectations about the service they are going to receive and their perceptions of the service provider's action. If perceptions exceed expectations, the services provided by the banks will be considered excellent (Vazquez et al., 2001).As discussed by Shahrzad Shahriari (2014), service quality in online banking has a lot of underlying dimensions which includes reliability, responsiveness, security, ease of use, access and so on. Reliability includes correctness of order fulfilment, prompt delivery and billing accuracy. Responsiveness concerns the willingness or readiness of employees to provide service. Security includes security of information and minimal online purchases risks. Ease of use related to easy-touse URL address, well organized, well-structured and easy-to-follow a catalogue, site navigability and concise and understandable content, terms and conditions. Access includes the list of company's streets and email address, phone and fax number, accessibility of service representatives, availability of chat room, bulletin board and other communication channels.In online environments, service quality is defined as the ability of a website to make efficient and effective shopping, purchasing and transporting of products and services (Zeithaml et al. …

Development of a two-step touch method for website navigation on smartphones

The touch method for hyperlink selection in smartphones can often create usability problems because a hyperlink is universally smaller than a finger contact area as well as visually occluded by a finger while pressing. In this study, we developed a two-step touch method (called Press and Flick method) and comprehensively examined its effectiveness using the goals, operators, methods, and selection rules (GOMS) model and user testing. The two-step touch method consisted of finger press and flick motions; a target hyperlink was selected by a finger press motion, and a finger flick method was subsequently conducted for error correction if the initial interaction (press) failed. We compared the two-step touch method with the current touch method through the GOMS model and user testing. As a result, the two-step touch method was significantly superior to the current touch method in terms of error rate and subjective satisfaction score; however, its superiority in terms of number of interactions and touch time was vulnerably affected by error rate. The two-step touch method developed in this study can improve the usability and user experience of website navigation using smartphones.

M148 Investigating The Feasibility Of An Online Health Resource With Nurse Coaching To Support Self-management In Copd

Introduction Pulmonary rehabilitation includes self-management support for COPD but is not suitable for or accessible to all. Web based approaches have potential to provide self-management support but effectiveness is not consistently demonstrated and issues of reach and adoption are relatively unstudied. We performed a mixed methods before-and-after study of an intervention comprising web-based health promotion for LTC self-management, The Prevention Plan TM (TPP), with integrated nurse coach support. This report describes the qualitative evaluation. The aim was to understand the benefits gained and the characteristics of patients most likely to benefit. Method Nineteen patients were recruited in two waves from May 2012–January 2013. Key selection criteria included for group 1 FEV 1 1 Semi-structured interviews were scheduled for one month and three months after recruitment and were focused around experiences of the programme, benefits and self-management behaviours. Qualitative data were imported into NVivo 10 and analysed through thematic content analysis. Two researchers discussed the themes and subthemes to ensure non-redundant categorization. Results Fifteen patients were interviewed. Key benefits: increased motivation for self-management, use of self-management skills, increased access to resources and enhanced understanding of lifestyle risk factors. Benefits were facilitated by use of action plans within TPP, nurse coach support to on-going motivation and completion of a health risk assessment by those with little awareness of lifestyle risks. Barriers to gaining benefit included preference for one-to-one contact, insufficient tailoring of website content and difficulties with website navigation. Patients most likely to benefit were those who: wanted to change but had no behavioural strategy; had little previous disease education; had an autonomous sense of self-determination. Conclusions The programme provided good support for the action phase of behaviour change, but less so for the motivational phase. Patients who were ready to change but did not have knowledge, skills or strategies benefited the most. When implementing a behaviour change programme providers should identify whether it addresses motivation and/or behaviour and assess potential participants accordingly. People who are not ready or able to change may derive little benefit from a behavioural programme.

SiHLEWeb.com: Development and usability testing of an evidence-based HIV prevention website for female African-American adolescents.

African-American adolescent girls are at disproportionate risk for HIV infection. Although numerous evidence-based risk-reduction interventions exist, dissemination and implementation resources remain limited, and prevention services remain notably inaccessible to the very populations at highest risk for HIV infection. Internet delivery of HIV risk-reduction programming has promise as a mechanism for extending the reach of existing prevention efforts and overcoming barriers associated with traditional service delivery. This article (1) details the development process for the creation of SiHLEWeb, a web-adapted version of an evidence-based, culturally informed HIV prevention program traditionally delivered to female African-American adolescents via an in-person group format, and (2) presents findings from quantitative and qualitative usability testing conducted among 18 African-American girls (13-18 years). Results suggest that users found the website improved knowledge and learning, was helpful, efficient to use, and generally attractive. Users reported some concerns about website navigation. Implications for Internet delivery of health prevention programming are discussed.

Making the Most of the Affordable Care Act's Contraceptive Coverage Mandate for Privately-Insured Women

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), most women of reproductive age with private health insurance have, or will soon have, first-dollar coverage of contraception and contraceptive counseling. The need for contraceptive coverage is great, because most American families want two children, resulting in the average woman spending three decades of her reproductive life trying to avoid pregnancy (Guttmacher Institute, 2012; Finer & Philbin, 2014). Contraceptive coverage without cost sharing is a sea change in women’s health insurance. This policy change has the potential to dramatically shift contraceptive use patterns, to reduce the U.S. unintended pregnancy ratedwhich stands at approximately half of all pregnancies (Finer & Zolna, 2014)dand to improve the health of women and families. In this commentary, we argue that realizing the potential of this policy change requires more action on the part of public health practitioners, insurers, health care providers, and researchers than is currently evident, andwe offer some suggestions for making the most of first-dollar contraceptive coverage.

The Effect of Information Design on Cognitive Processing of Website Navigation

The information displayed on a website is a critical factor that affects the cognition of internet users. This study adopted a between-subjects design to examine the effect of the information design of a website and the involvement of internet users on purchasing cognition. The results indicated significant differences between high- and low-quality diagnostic information on the purchasing cognition of subjects. The subjects had better purchasing cognition when navigating a high-quality diagnostic information website than when navigating a low-quality diagnostic information website. In addition, there was a significant interactive effect of different qualities of nondiagnostic information and subject involvement on purchasing cognition. Namely, the subjects who had low involvement had better purchasing cognition when navigating a website with high-quality nondiagnostic information than when browsing one with low-quality nondiagnostic information, but there was no significant difference between navigating websites with high- and low-quality nondiagnostic information if the subjects had high involvement.

Health Websites: Accessibility and Usability for American Sign Language Users

To date, there have been efforts toward creating better health information access for Deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users. However, the usability of websites with access to health information in ASL has not been evaluated. Our article focuses on the usability of four health websites that include ASL videos. We seek to obtain ASL users’ perspectives on the navigation of these ASL-accessible websites, finding the health information that they needed, and perceived ease of understanding ASL video content. ASL users (n = 32) were instructed to find specific information on four ASL-accessible websites, and answered questions related to (a) navigation to find the task, (b) website usability, and (c) ease of understanding ASL video content for each of the four websites. Participants also gave feedback on what they would like to see in an ASL health library website, including the benefit of added captioning and/or signer model to medical illustration of health videos. Participants who had lower health literacy had greater difficulty in finding information on ASL-accessible health websites. This article also describes the participants’ preferences for an ideal ASL-accessible health website, and concludes with a discussion on the role of accessible websites in promoting health literacy in ASL users.

Radio-neuroprotective effect of L-alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine (GPC) in an experimental rat model.

Ionizing radiation plays a major role in the treatment of brain tumors, but side-effects may restrict the efficacy of therapy. In the present study, our goals were to establish whether the administration of L-alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine (GPC) can moderate or prevent any of the irradiation-induced functional and morphological changes in a rodent model of hippocampus irradiation. Anesthetized adult (6-weeks-old) male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to 40 Gy irradiation of one hemisphere of the brain, without or with GPC treatment (50 mg/kg bw by gavage), the GPC treatment continuing for 4 months. The effects of this partial rat brain irradiation on the spatial orientation and learning ability of the rats were assessed with the repeated Morris water maze (MWM) test. Histopathologic (HP) evaluation based on hematoxylin-eosin and Luxol blue staining was performed 4 months after irradiation. The 40 Gy irradiation resulted in a moderate neurological deficit at the levels of both cognitive function and morphology 4 months after the irradiation. The MWM test proved to be a highly sensitive tool for the detection of neurofunctional impairment. The site navigation of the rats was impaired by the irradiation, but the GPC treatment markedly decreased the cognitive impairment. HP examination revealed lesser amounts of macrophage density, reactive gliosis, calcification and extent of demyelination in the GPC-treated group. GPC treatment led to significant protection against the cognitive decline and cellular damage, evoked by focal brain irradiation at 40 Gy dose level. Our study warrants further research on the protective or mitigating effects of GPC on radiation injuries.