Task-Based Assessment of Web Navigation Design

Even though the importance of Web applications is still increasing, design practice in this area is still mainly based on informal techniques and methods. Currently, few descriptive techniques are available to support web modeling and in practice, it is unusual to model web applications even though modeling is usually the corner stone of “classical” computer applications. Models not only formalize requirements but also they can help to assess the design in all the stages of the development process. In this paper we present notations dedicated to web navigation modeling and how they can affect the design process. In addition we discuss how task models could be used to assess navigation models according to user’s activity. Our aim with this kind of evaluation is to ensure (prior to implementation) that important users tasks can (or cannot) be performed with the system under construction.