User-Centered Design of Web Pages

  • Authors:
  • Chung-Hsing Yeh;Yang-Cheng Lin

  • Affiliations:
  • Clayton School of Information Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Clayton, Australia 3800;Department of Arts and Design, National Hualien University of Education, Hualien, Taiwan 970

  • Venue:
  • ICCSA '08 Proceedings of the international conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, Part II
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

This paper conducts an experimental study on university web pages to examine whether the hyperlink style affects users' feelings of a web page. We categorize 3 hyperlink styles, including text only, text and symbol, and text and icon. A grey relational analysis conducted suggests that the hyperlink style is a crucial element in user-centered web page design. The experimental study identifies 7 web page design elements and 33 representative webs pages as experimental samples for developing a neural network (NN) model. The NN mode is used to examine the complex relationship between 7 design elements and 3 users' feelings of web pages. With the NN model, a web page design database is built consisting of 3,645 different combinations of design elements, together with their associated feeling values. As a general rule, a web page with the "text only" hyperlinks has the highest possibility of being easiest and clearest. A web page with the "text and symbol" hyperlinks will have the most classic look, while the "text and icon" hyperlinks will make the web page have the most modern appearance. These design-supporting results provide useful insights in facilitating the user-centered web design process.