User-Centered Evaluation of Personalized Web Sites

In addition to traditional usability issues, evaluation studies for personalized Web sites and applications must consider concerns specific to these systems. In the general case, usability studies for computer-based applications attempt to determine whether the software, in actual use, meets users’ needs; whether users can accomplish their goals in using the software; whether users can understand and use the application (whether they comprehend what they can do and how); the rate, frequency, and severity of user errors; the rate of and time duration for task completion; and so on. But in the case of user-centered evaluations of personalized Web sites, there are additional questions and issues that must be addressed. In this paper, we present some of these, based on our experience in usability studies of a personalized e-commerce site.