J.A. Jacko (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part I, HCII 2009, LNCS 5610, pp. 339–348, 2009.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009
A Prototype to Validate ErgoCoIn: A Web Site
Ergonomic Inspection Technique
Marcelo Morandini
1
, Walter de Abreu Cybis
2
, and Dominique L. Scapin
3
1
School of Arts, Science and Humanities – University of Sao Paulo,
Sao Paulo, Brazil
m.morandini@usp.br
2
Ecole Polytechnique
Montreal, Canada
walter.cybis@polymtl.ca
3
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique
Rocquencourt, France
dominique.scapin@inria.fr
Abstract. This paper presents current actions, results and perspectives concern-
ing the development of the ErgoCoIn approach, which allows non expert
inspectors to conduct ergonomic inspections of e-commerce web sites. An envi-
ronment supporting inspections based on this approach was designed and a tool
is being developed in order to accomplish its validation plan. Besides this vali-
dation, the actions to be undertaken will allow us to analyze the task of applying
checklists and specify an inspection support environment especially fitted for
that. This is of great importance as this environment is intended to be an open
web service supporting ergonomic inspections of web sites from different do-
mains. A wiki environment for this tool development is also being proposed.
Keywords: Usability, Evaluation, Web Sites, Inspection, Web 2.0.
1 Introduction
An important attribute for most interactive systems is the level of usability they offer
to users while accomplishing their tasks. According to ISO9241:11, usability is char-
acterized by the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users achieve
specified goals in a particular environment [9]. In such a way, usability is a blend of
objective and subjective task oriented measures. Effectiveness can be objectively
measured by the rate of users’ achievement (with accuracy and completeness) of
specific goals. Efficiency can also be objectively measured by the amount of re-
sources expended on task by actual users. User satisfaction concerns subjective data
indicating how well users evaluate the system’s comfort and acceptability.
Usability can be measured during user interactions with the system and evaluated
by evaluators and/or inspectors that may judge how well the user interface aspects
are, a priori, fitted to users, tasks and environments. In doing so, they judge the ergo-
nomics of that user interface. Usability and ergonomics are linked to a cause-effect
relationship. The more ergonomic (or fitted) the interface is the higher is the level of