Abstract
Various studies have shown that formative evaluation may significantly enhance the effectiveness of functional documents. In the past decade, an academic research tradition has emerged focusing on the methodology of document evaluation. As yet, the lion's share of the research focuses on the evaluation of paper documents. The rise of the World Wide Web as a new and important information channel calls for an adaptation of evaluation methods and the development of new evaluation approaches. The literature about website evaluation is, as yet, dominated by a 'human-computer interaction' perspective, with a strong emphasis on navigation and interface usability, but little attention for the way people use and interpret textual and visual information contained in websites. The research program proposed will consist of two PhD projects and an integrative project conducted by the two applicants. In the PhD projects, evaluation methods will be developed and empirically compared for evaluating information-rich websites, with a strong focus on the use, interpretation and appreciation of the textual and visual information. The first project deals with expert-focused evaluation, and focuses on the use and effects of web heuristics by expert evaluators. The second project deals with user-focused evaluation, and compares six methods that can be characterized using the dimensions 'in-use versus non-use', and 'laboratory versus real-life'. Both PhD projects will be conducted using municipal websites. In the integrative project, a monograph about website evaluation will be written. In this monograph, the results of the two PhD projects will be connected with those of other national and international research projects to provide a state-of-the-art overview of website evaluation methodology.