The Role of Web Usability Evaluation: An Illustrative Case Study of the User-Centred Developed Web-Portal to Facilitate Tanzania’s Higher Learning Institutions Students’ Field Attachment

Abstract

Field attachment is the major technique set to help narrowing the gap between skills needed in workplaces and the content of relevant courses covered in respective Tanzanian higher learning institutions. The process of coordinating and allocating students to relevant companies for field attachment is reported to face number of challenges. Challenges reported to face allocation and coordination process are lack of students’ linkage to companies and cost in terms of time and resources as many manual processes are involved to get the work done. These challenges seem to increase with the gradual increase in enrolment of students in higher learning institutions. A web-based portal was developed to address the allocation and coordination of attachment of Tanzanian higher learning institution students to relevant companies for field practices. Collaborative user-centred design techniques were employed to come up with a portal. The portal was finally evaluated for usability to confirm the impact of involving users in the early stages of development. The usability evaluation method applied involved user testing and questionnaire. Real users’ behaviour and their levels of satisfaction regarding different tasks were observed and analysed. This illustrative study assessed the role of usability evaluation in favour of the collaborative user-centred technique applied to develop the Field Attachment Management System (FAMS). The results confirmed an impact of user-driven development as the final portal passed with a high degree of acceptance and users were able to accomplish tasks correctly the first time. Results further indicate that regardless of user-centred approach applied to develop a portal, usability flaws and missed features were still realized during usability evaluation. Moreover, through this illustrative study the contribution of usability evaluation to the improvement of the final portal is identified.