Hypermedia Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Issues.

One can perform a heuristic evaluation of a hypermedia application effectively by coupling a systematic analysis of the application based on a hypermedia design model with general usability criteria, independent of the specific application area, user profile(s) and user task(s). We call our method design-oriented evaluation (as opposed to the user-oriented evaluation commonly applied in usability testing) since it evaluates the internal strength of the design underlying the hypermedia application. Design-oriented evaluation results from our experience both in developing several hypermedia applications, and systematically inspecting and evaluating many commercial applications and prototypes. By its very nature, our method addresses neither software design (which can be evaluated with general software evaluation techniques), nor how well the application relates to a domain or to specific user needs (a main concern of other usability evaluation techniques). Our approach complements more general evaluation methods [1, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21] for the field of hypermedia. In this paper we describe our design-oriented evaluation method and apply it to a highly popular commercial application: Microsoft’s “Art Gallery” , a hypermedia guide to the National Gallery in London’s painting collection. Art Gallery is an outstanding and enjoyable application. Initially designed only for the museum’s visitors [20], it is now widely available as a CD-ROM [17]. We also discuss aspects of reuse in hypermedia applications and propose some initial suggestions for “designing for reuse.”