Using a Discount Usability Engineering Approach to Assess Public Web-based Systems in Saudi Arabia

摘要

Presently, public web-based systems are gradually replacing the conventional paper-based public services. As such, this can significantly reduce costs and save time for the government and the public. This study aims to review the current and up-to-date literature for discount usability approach. Additionally, it also aims to assess the usability of public web-based systems in Saudi Arabia based on the discount usability engineering approach. The study results showed that usability testing is more powerful method than heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthroughs, because it is able to identify more usability problems compared to other useable methods. However, the heuristic evaluation did not perform well as expected and failed to reveal a number of problems linked to usability principles. It was also found that the usability testing method reveals more problems related to a number of usability principles such as operation visibility, synthesizability and recoverability.