A Forth Case Study

Recently Air New Zealand, one of my case studies has changed its website so I will now be comparing four websites, old Air New Zealand, new Air New Zealand, Jet Star and Pacific Blue

What the Experience of Beauty is

I have recently been looking at www.ted.com and came across a talk by Denis Dutton on a Darwinian Theory of Beauty.

Denis talks about misconceptions in explaining that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is what moves you personally or particularly as academics prefer beauty is in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder”. He discusses that while some ideas on beauty remain within a culture most are easily transferred.

To fully understand universal cross culturalal aesthetic pleasure and values, we must use reverse engineering and look to a darwinian evolutionary history of our artistic and aesthetic taste. This involves looking back at the social situations in which we evolved.

Keeping information Legitimate

In response to one of my class mates decisions to choose the International Journal of Qualitative Methods to publish her paper if she chooses to continue with it, our lecturer decided to let us discuss a paper of our choice from this Journal.

I have chosen to look at Sampling Hurdles: “Borderline Illegitimate” to Legitimate Data as I am just finishing off my user study of New Zealand travel websites.

In this Journal Anupama Garg discusses how issues to do with sampling access and recruitment problems can lead to borderline illegitimate information being collected.

“According to the ethical codes of research practice, researchers should collect only the type of data specified in the consent form and only during the specified periods for which participants’ consent has been obtained (Faculty of Social Sciences Committee on Ethics, 2002). The data thus obtained and their use in research is considered legitimate. On the other hand, data collected in covert research, where participants are unaware of the purpose of research, how and what type of data will be collected, their rights to withdraw consent, and so on, are called illegitimate data (ESRC, 2005; Grinyer, 2001). In other words, illegitimate data collection involves a degree of deception and thus “violates both the principle of informed consent and the participant’s right to privacy” (Faculty of Social Sciences Committee on Ethics, 2002, section: “Illegitimate” data; paragraph 2).”

Do flash images have an effect on the usability of the site????

Users get distracted by these images and can tend to find them annoying. These images seem to change the attitudes of my participants in the usability study and they tend to get confused by all the extra information flying across the screen creating a slower problem solving process. Most have felt free to mention how annoyed they were that they couldn’t see where to stop the flash images.

Open Access Journals

It is almost time to hand in my final dissertation on the usability of New Zealand air travel websites.  In response to a blog post made by one of my lecturers, Mark McGuire, on open access journals I have been looking for a journal that I could possibly publish in one day.

e-Minds: International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction

“The goal of eMinds is to develop the study of current practice, content, technology, and services on Human-Computer Interaction. This journal aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas concerning theoretical, technical, practical, social and pedagogical issues; helping professionals working in the field to contribute, to disseminate knowledge, and to learn from each other’s work.”

 

I think this is appropriate for work as the main key ideas found in previous articles within this journal are User centered design, usability, and interaction.

How I made my videos for this blog

Video: This was made using a series of slides that i set up in keynote, which is a software mostly used for presenting.

For the other three videos, which can be found on the case studies page i used iShowU. This enabled me to record the screen as i went around the three websites, Air New Zealand, Jet Star, and Pacific Blue.

Here is an overview of how iShowU works

All Audio was recorded using an H2 Zoom recorder

All audio and video editing was done using Final Cut Pro

Here is an overview of how Final Cut Pro enables you to edit video and sound quick and easily

 

Difficulties

Most difficulties that i came across involved the zoom recorder. The first of which is that it picks up all sorts of sounds even those that i did not hear while i was talking. This mean that i had to spend more time cutting odd sounds out which included separating channels to find the culprit, however this was tedious so i tended to just record parts again. Another difficulty was matching up the sound with the video when editing. To get around this i tended to use quite a hard tap on the mouse to open up a piece of information. In doing so i could match up the sound of my tap with the mouse clicking on a document on the screen.

Usability and Functionality

Usability and functionality are the major elements which can significantly affect the performance of a website. (yeung, Law) 

The easier a website is to use, the less time a prospective customer spends on navigating a website. The elements that enhance online attributes are site maps, home buttons, search engines for website contents and directories. Other aspects include a memorable website address, availability of non- graphic versions, accuracy of links and correct spelling, clear and readable text, clean and uncluttered Web page. The presence of such visualisation elements enhance both the visual experience and the reliability and trustability of information presented by online users.