Effect of Information Architecture on the Usability of a University Website

Abstract

A well-planned information architecture (IA) of a website can enhance the end users' efficiency, learnability, controllability and intention to revisit the site. Its significance is even more in the context of academic websites where the generation, management, and distribution of information are among the major activities. However, it remains a neglected issue as designers of academic websites have overlooked the important aspect of ‘intuitive user navigation' and focused primarily on its ‘look and feel.' Thus, the current study aims to analyze and compare the effectiveness of information architectural designs of some randomly selected university websites of Punjab (India) through a usability testing technique. For this purpose, the performance metric measured was the information seeking time. The usability session of each subject was captured through Camtasia Studio software. The findings of this study highlight the shortcomings of presently designed academic websites which adversely affect the usability of a website.