Ghazwa Malak
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Web-based applications are software systems that continuously evolve to meet users' needs and to adapt to new technologies. Assuring their quality is then a difficult, but essential task. In fact, a large number of factors can affect their quality. Considering these factors and their interaction involves managing uncertainty and subjectivity inherent to this kind of applications. In this article, we present a probabilistic approach for building Web quality models and the associated assessment method. The proposed approach is based on Bayesian Networks. A model is built following a four-step process consisting in collecting quality characteristics, refining them, building a model structure, and deriving the model parameters.
The feasibility of the approach is illustrated on the important quality characteristic of Navigability design. To validate the produced model, we conducted an experimental study with 20 subjects and 40 web pages. The results obtained show that the scores given by the used model are strongly correlated with navigability as perceived and experienced by the users.
- Albuquerque, A. B. and Belchior, A. D. 2002. E-commerce Websites: A qualitative evaluation. In Proceedings of the 11th International World Wide Web Conference.Google Scholar
- Basili, V. R., Caldiera, G., and Rombach, H. D. 1994. The goal question metric approach. In The Encyclopedia of Software Engineering. Volume 1, John Wiley & Sons, 469--476.Google Scholar
- Boldyreff, C., Warren, P., Gaskell, C., and Marshall, A. 2000. WEB-SEM project: Establishing effective Web site evaluation metrics. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Web Site Evolution. Scott Tilley, Ed. 17--20.Google Scholar
- Brajnik, G. 2001. Towards valid quality models for Websites. In Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Human Factors and the Web.Google Scholar
- Cachero, C., Meliá, S., Genero, M., Poels, G., and Calero, C. 2007. Towards improving the navigability of Web applications: A model-driven approach. Eur. J. Inform. Syst. 16, 4, 420--447.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Caro, A., Calero, C., De Salamanca, J., E., and Piattini, M. 2007. Refinement of a tool to assess the data quality in Web portals. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Quality Software. 238--243. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Charland, F., Badri, L., and Malak, G. 2007. WebQuality: Towards a tool supporting the assessment of Web-based applications quality. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering.Google Scholar
- Cook, T. D. and Campbell, D. T. 1979. Quasi-Experimentation—Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
- Dalton, S. 1996. A workbench to support development and maintenance of World-Wide Web documents. MSc. Thesis. Department of Computer Science, University of Durham, Durham, UK.Google Scholar
- Deleuze, C. 2006. Some points affecting web performance. Comput. Netw. 50, 10, 1533--1546.Google Scholar
- Deshpande, Y., Murugesan, S., Ginige, A., Hansen, S., Schwabe, D., Gaedke, M., and White, B. 2002. Web Engineering. Web Engin. 1, 1, 003--017. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Differding, C., Joisl, B., and Lott, C. M. 1996. Technology package for the goal question metric paradigm, Tech. rep. 281/96, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.Google Scholar
- Dubois, D. and Prade, H. 1993. Fuzzy sets and probability: Misunderstanding, bridges and gaps. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems. Vol. 2, 1059--1068.Google Scholar
- Fenton, N. E. and Pfleeger, S. L. 1996. Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach, 2nd Ed., International Thomson Computer Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ganesh, J. P. 2007. Probabilistic software quality analysis, Doctoral thesis, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
- Guillemot, M. and König, D. 2006. Web testing made easy. In Proceedings of the Dynamic Languages Symposium Companion to the 21st ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications. 692--693. Google ScholarDigital Library
- HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). 2006. Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines. U.S. Government Printing Office, Internet World Stats. 2008. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm on May 2008.Google Scholar
- ISO/IEC 9126-1. 2001. Software Engineering—Product Quality—Part 1: Quality Model, International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
- Ivory, M. Y. 2001. An empirical foundation for automated Web interface evaluation, Doctoral dissertation, Computer Science Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Keevil, B. 1998. Measuring the usability index of your Website. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation: Scaling the Heights: the Future of Information Technology (SIGDOC). 271--277. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kirakowski, J. and Cierlik, B. 1998. Measuring the usability of Web sites. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society 42nd Annual Meeting. Vol. 1, 424--428.Google Scholar
- Lee, Y. and Kozar, K. A. 2006. Investigating the effect of website quality on e-business success: an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. Decision Support Syst. 42, 3, 1383--1401. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Malak, G., Sahraoui, H., Badri, L., and Badri, M. 2006. Modeling Web-based applications quality: Towards a framework using Bayesian networks. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering. 398--404. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mavromoustakos, S. and Andreou, A. S. 2007. WAQE: a Web Application Quality Evaluation model. Int. J. Web Engin. Technol. 3, 1, 96--120. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mich, L., Franch, M., and Gaio, L. 2003. Evaluating and designing Web site quality. IEEE Multimedia 10, 1, 34--43. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Moses, J. 2007. Benchmarking quality measurement. Softw. Qual. Cont. 15, 4, 449--462. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Neapolitan, R. E. 2003. Learning Bayesian Networks, Prentice Hall Series in Artificial Intelligence. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Neil, M., Fenton, N. E., and Nielsen, L. 2000. Building large-scale Bayesian networks. Knowl. Engin. Rev. 15, 3, 257--284. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Newman, M. W. and Landay, J. A. 2000. Sitemaps, storyboards, and specifications: A sketch of Web site design practice as manifested through artifacts. In Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques. 263--274. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nielsen, J. 2000. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nielsen, J. and Loranger, H. 2006. Prioritizing Web Usability, New Riders Press Publishing, 1st ed. Indianapolis, IN. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nogier, J. F. 2005. Ergonomie du logiciel et design Web: Le manuel des interfaces utilisateur. 3rd Ed. Editions Dunod, Paris, France.Google Scholar
- Offut, J. 2002. Quality Attributes of Web Software Applications. IEEE Soft. 25--32. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Olsina, L., Lafuente, G., and Rossi, G. 2001. Specifying quality characteristics and attributes for Web sites. In Web Engineering, Software Engineering and Web Application Development. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2016, Springer-Verlag. 266--278. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Olsina, L. and Rossi, G. 2002. Measuring Web application quality with WebQEM. IEEE MultiMedia 9, 4. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Olsina, L., Papa, F., and Molina, H. 2007. How to measure and evaluate Web applications in a consistent way. In Web Engineering: Modelling and Implementing Web Applications, Springer, 385--420.Google Scholar
- Opquast. 2004. Quality best practices for online services. http://en.opquast.com/bonnes-pratiques.Google Scholar
- Ruiz, J., Calero, C., and Piattini, M. 2003. A three dimensional Web quality model. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Web Engineering. 384--385. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Saba, H., de Freitas Jorge, E. M., Costa, V. F., and de Barros Pereira, H. B. 2006. WEBTESTE: A stress test tool. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies: Internet Technology/Web Interface and Applications. INSTICC Press, 246--249.Google Scholar
- Sahraoui, H., Boukadoum, M., Chawiche, H. M., Mai, G., and Serhani, M. A. 2002. A fuzzy logic framework to improve the performance and interpretation of rule-based quality prediction models for object-oriented software. In Proceedings of the 26th Computer Software and Applications Conference. 131--138. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Seffah, A., Donyaee, M., R. Kline, B., and Padda, H. K. 2006. Usability measurement and metrics: A consolidated model. Softw. Qual. J. 14, 2, 159--178. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shubert, P. and Dettling W. 2002. Extended Web Assessment Method (EWAM)—Evaluation of electronic commerce applications from the customer's viewpoint. In Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Vol. 7, 175b. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stefani, A. and Xenos, M. 2008. E-commerce system quality assessment using a model based on ISO 9126 and belief networks. Softw. Qual. Contr. 16, 1, 107--129. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Trauwaert, E. 1988. On the meaning of Dunn's partition coefficient for fuzzy clusters. Fuzzy Sets Syst. 25, 2, 217--242. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Host, M., Ohlsson, M. C., Regnell, B., and Wesslén, A. 2000. Experimentation in Software Engineering: an Introduction. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zhang, Y., Zhu, H., and Greenwood, S. 2004. Website complexity metrics for measuring navigability. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Quality Software. 172--179. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zhou, Y., Leung, H., and Winoto, P. 2007. MNav: A Markov model-based Web site navigability measure. IEEE Trans. Softw. Engin. 33, 12, 869--890. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Modeling web quality using a probabilistic approach: An empirical validation
Recommendations
A fuzzy linguistic model to evaluate the quality of Web sites that store XML documents
The development of tools to find quality information on the Web is currently a pressing need. The aim of this paper is to present an evaluation model based on fuzzy computing with words to measure the information quality of Web sites that store XML (...
Incremental quality improvement in web applications using web model refactoring
WISE'07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Web information systems engineeringWeb applications must be usable and accessible; besides, they evolve at a fast pace and it is difficult to sustain a high degree of external quality. Agile methods and continuous refactoring are well-suited for the rapid development of Web applications ...
WAQE: a Web Application Quality Evaluation model
Developing and maintaining web applications that have high quality demands the provision of certain assessment and monitoring mechanisms to afford such a success. Continuous evaluation of the web applications to check if they meet functional and non-...
Comments