University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Adjusting the navigation structure of a faculty intranet to the average user with Card Sort and Q-sort

Stroes, J.D. (2018) Adjusting the navigation structure of a faculty intranet to the average user with Card Sort and Q-sort.

[img] PDF
1MB
Abstract:The purpose of this study was to propose an alternative navigation structure for the intranet of the faculty Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences of the University of Twente. A good navigation structure is crucial for the usability of a website (Bernard, 2000a). When adjusting this structure to the way users categorize the website content, the user’s mental model, the website will be more intuitive and easier to use (Schmettow & Sommer, 2016). A multilevel open card sorting test was done to gain insight into the mental model of the average intranet user as well as gaining insight into the way users label categories. Heatmaps were created to visualize the mental model of the users. A Q-sort task was used to prioritize items on the intranet. The average user categorized content representative for the intranet in three categories: education, organization and services. Anecdotal evidence that was gained during the Q-sort indicates that participants often did not see the need for the intranet in the first place. In contrary to the expectation of this research, the basic underlying structure of the current intranet did not deviate a lot from the proposed structure. Other impact factors of the intranet being hard to navigate are clutter because of outdated content, lack of location feedback and bad internal search engine findability. Advised is to evaluate the need for a BMS intranet in the first place. When it is decided to re-design the intranet the advice would be to critically measure the content to criteria as determined in this study, to adjust the categorization to the proposed structure and to appoint a content manager.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/74535
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page