Usability Testing of Services offered Through the Internet - Results of a Preliminary Study for Internet Banking

Abstract

The commercial purposes of the Internet have been increasing due to the delivery of services to customers by severa! organizations. Therefore, special attention should be paid to ease of use, attractiveness and minimal training needs of the systems. This paper addresses the problem of usability testing for Internet based service channels. It also describes apreliminary experiment that was carried out with students at FEUP - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto. This experiment and the lessons that were learnt will be the basis for proposing a more complete usability test for a prototype of a new Internet Banking System with real customers - users and non-users - of a Portuguese Bank. The experimental work has highlighted severa! key issues for conducting usability tests as well as some problems regarding the tested system.