Creación de un patrón de usabilidad para mejorar la navegación de estudiantes bachilleres en sitios web universitarios. Aplicativo: ESPOCH.

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to create and implement a web usability pattern (interaction pattern) that allows improving the navigability of high-school-students on the website of the Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo (ESPOCH). This pattern was implemented in a prototype of the institution's website, which was evaluated regarding to its usability, accessibility and technical quality. The usability was evaluated using two validated instruments within a quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test study with a sample size of 266 third-year high school students from the "Unidad Educativa Isabel de Godín". The accessibility was assessed through two tools (eXaminator and Nibbler); and the code technical quality through the W3C Validator. The results obtained after evaluating the prototype, showed that the implementation of the interaction pattern allowed to improve the usability levels in the aspects such as: utility from 47.97% (pre-test) to 85.02% (post-test); ease of use from 43.59% (pre-test) to 85.46% (post-test); ease of learning from 43.97% (pre-test) to 86.79% (post-test); satisfaction from 42.89% (pre-test) to 86.37% (post-test); ease and time to complete a task from 45.41% (pre-test) to 88.40%. The accessibility in the current website presented a score of 6.9/10, while the proposed prototype obtained 8.4/10. The technical quality meanwhile observed a total of 53 errors and 64 warnings in the current website, but the prototype did not present neither errors nor warnings. The observed results suggest that the implementation of the interaction pattern in the prototype of the ESPOCH website allows to improve the usability and web accessibility, providing a greater ease of navigation on the part of the third-year high school students, therefore, its use is recommended.