User Needs Analysis and Evaluation of Portals Panayiotis Zaphiris 1 Aspasia Dellaporta 2 Dean Mohamedally 1 1 Centre for HCI Design City University, London, EC1V 0HB, UK 2 CIMEX 4 Abstract In this paper, we first present and discuss the importance of usability and accessibility in the design and evaluation of portal systems. We then present an incremental framework for taking this issues into consideration during the design of such systems and finally conclude with the application of this framework to the design of a public service portal. 4 Introduction As specified in the ISO 13407 standard (ISO, 1999), user-centred design begins with a thorough understanding of the needs and requirements of the users. User needs analysis (or Knowledge Elicitation) and evaluation methods in HCI are a critical function to the success of requirements and design gathering (Maiden et al., 1995), usability testing and user evaluation stages of software development (Zaphiris & Kurniawan, 2001). Examples of knowledge elicitation methods often start with initial questionnaire feedback, requirements task walkthroughs, interviews techniques, and focus group sessions which will be discussed in further detail in a subsequent section. It can