PhD

In today's digital era websites offer a professional and credible image for any organization. Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) had a long felt need that the Directorate of Extension (DoE), KAU launched a need-based website as a part of strengthening its extension activities. The working group on remandating extension approaches of KAU had recommended it. The present KAU website, www.kau.edu, does not cater to the information needs of all the stakeholders. The present study was undertaken with the objectives of generating need based e-contents to develop the first level prototype of a bilingual (English and Malayalam) website for DoE, KAU and participatory assessment and refinement of the same before its final design by the host organization.

Too often, websites are designed with a focus on the technological capabilities of hardware or software tools that this approach omits the most important part of the process – the end user. User-Centered Design (UCD) of a website is the process of designing it, from the perspective of how it will be understood and used by a human user. User-centered design (UCD) places users at the centre of the design process, starting from the stages of planning and designing the system requirements to implementation and testing of the product. A web prototype is a rudimentary working model of a website that allows to check for flaws and to make sure that the website will be easy to use. The methodology followed in this study for the web prototype design was based on the ISO 13407 guidelines for a UCD project following the steps of requirement specification, requirement gathering, design and evaluation.

The pilot study identified agricultural scientists, agricultural extension officers and farmers as the major prospective stakeholders of the intended website along with the other potential clients like agripreneurs, researchers, school / college students, self-help groups, non-governmental organizations, banks, policy makers, other line departments, and private sector organizations. It also explored 15 main contents viz; ‘About DoE’, ‘Schemes & Projects’, ‘Showcase of Technologies’, ‘Locating Your Nearest KAU KVK’, ‘Crop Information’, ‘Agri Market Informant’, ‘Weather’, ‘Promising Agri-Enterprises’, ‘Forthcoming Events’, ‘News & Information’, ‘Publications from KAU’, ‘Media Gallery’, ‘Important Links’, ‘Links To Social Network Media’ and ‘Contact Us’ as well as their sub contents.
The first phase of the main study assessed the information needs of the respondents regarding the main contents as well as their sub-contents. Out of the 15 main information needs, need indices significantly varied for ‘Schemes and Projects’, ‘Crop Information’, ‘Weather ‘Promising agri-enterprises’, ‘Links to social network media’, ‘Forthcoming events’, ‘News & Information’, ‘Publications from KAU’, ‘Media Gallery’ and ‘Important links’. Need indices for the sub contents of ‘About DoE, KAU’, ‘Showcase of technologies’, ‘Agri Market Informant’, ‘Promising agri-enterprises’, ‘News& Information’, ‘Publications from KAU’and ‘Important links’ also varied significantly. The respondents also suggested inclusion of 23 items in the website, as contents and links.

The respondents welcomed the web prototype with great enthusiasm. In the online end-user assessment, the web prototype was evaluated with respect to eight main attributes- content and information management, site design and layout, linkage with relevant internet, provisions for scaling up and updating, information retrievability, interactivity, user-friendliness and perceived extent of use. ‘Perceived extent of use’ and ‘Provisions for scaling up and updating’ got the highest grand mean scores. The scores of the other features showed a fair performance, but ‘Interactivity’ warned of poor performance. The respondents’ suggestions were noted for the refinement of the website.

Usability is one of the essential features of a website, and is a measure of the interactive user experience. A user-friendly interface design is easy-to-learn, supports users’ tasks and goals efficiently and effectively, and is satisfying and engaging to use. An interface’s level of usability can be measured by inviting intended users of the system to participate in a usability testing session. Testing of the web prototype was done online by giving specific exercise (task) to the respondents and self reported validation was used to assess the task performance. The task success rates were measured by attributes viz; ‘effectiveness of use’, ‘efficiency of use’ and ‘satisfaction of the users’. Constraints reported by the users were recorded.

The present work has also rendered a methodical guidance to future researchers in the form of a protocol for developing a user-centered website. The prototype was refined incorporating all possible suggestions and solving the constraints. The user centered web prototype developed for DoE, KAU, can act as an efficient base for the final DoE website, which could be a prominent information dispersal tool in the coming days. The Directorate of Extension, KAU may take up further refinement, frequent updating and upgrading of the prototype to make it a fully functional website.