Exploring the impact of design technique on usability: A case study on designing the eHealth websites using card sorting and interactive dialogue model

The design and info-architecture of the web content contribute significantly to achieving better usability and user experience as well as to adopting a website to its intended end-users. Although several design techniques exist, choosing a suitable one for designing a particular type of website is difficult and needs further investigation. Thus, the objective of this research is to explore the impact of a design technique on web usability and to find out the best suitable design technique for a particular type of website. To achieve these objectives, two separate websites for providing electronic health services named Citizen Health Service portal were developed using the two mostly used design techniques, namely card sorting and interactive dialogue model (IDM). The usability of both websites was evaluated through a laboratory-based usability testing approach with 20 participants. The study result showed that the IDM performs better in designing such an information-intensive website.