A Case Study of Usability Testing – the SUMI Evaluation Approach of the EducaNext Portal

The new challenge for designers and Human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers is to develop software tools and applications for effective e-learning. Software usability is one aspect of Human–computer interaction that can benefit from knowledge of the user and their tasks. However, in practice not much attention is given to this issue during testing. Evaluators often do not have the knowledge, instruments and/or time available to handle usability. One set of methods for determining whether an application enables users to achieve their predetermined goals effectively and efficiently is usability evaluation with end users. The paper presents the results of empirical study of usability evaluation which was based on SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) questionnaires. The software application tested was a multilingual educational portal EducaNext. Key-Words: human computer interaction (HCI), EducaNext educational portal, distance learning, software usability measurement inventory (SUMI), usability, end users