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Organization and wellness of information within web interface

I will explain this heading in just a little bit.

I've made this research proposal about two weeks ago to the organization. I have not received an approval from the director yet, but wanted to post something to get this research going. I've mirrored a grant proposal that I used to write for PU. However, you know that if this is an academic research proposal, it is common practice to write chapter 1 (Introduction), 2 (Lit Review), 3 (Methods) - we all have better things to do than read 100 plus pages to get the point and understand what needs to be done. So here is the condensed version.

Characters XXX have been used to protect the name of the company.
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Research Summary

           

Recently, XXX has been recognized by Fortune 2012 magazine as one of the leading companies in the airline industry. The company focuses on providing the most efficient air travel experiences for both domestic and international travelers. In an effort to continuously provide optimal travel experiences to their clients, the current study is proposing a consumer based usability research study to examine the perception, information transfer and visualization of individuals who use XXX web interface as a main instrument to reserve their travel arrangements. The initial interview conducted by the usability team at XXX has revealed that end-users have experienced difficulty allocating necessary information within the airline website. Furthermore the consumers have indicated that the clusters of information within the airline website is misleading. That is, the contents and topics that end-users are trying to locate appeared to be grouped in erroneous sections and headings within interface navigators.  

When developing graphical interfaces, the designers should consider 4 main areas to satisfy the product as well as the end-users. These areas are composed of efficiency, accuracy, recall and emotional response of the end-users upon interacting with the web or graphical interface. The proposed study will evaluate the efficiency and emotional response of end-users when locating and clustering information within the XXX website. Furthermore, the study will develop prototype graphical interface and information architecture to improve the end-users’ time spent allocating information. Thus, the current study hopes to find the underlying reason behind the efficiency differences that were presented by individuals and group, especially between pre and post graphical interface prototypes. The study will also analyze whether the strategies that they have used to locate information are more or less effective and could be used toward other graphical interfaces used by XXX.  

The mixed design of quantitative and qualitative research method will be used to measure perception, information transfer and visualization of individuals. The performance difference before and after the treatment will be analyzed to measure the cognitive transfer of information and task analyses. Interviews, focus groups, and think aloud techniques of qualitative design will be used to examine the method that end-users use to cluster information and examine the organization structure of the menu and heading of the current graphical interface. The results of the study will be shared with organization, peers, and scholars to provide them with new insight on how information should be structured and how content needs to be organized so that end users will experience positive emotional outcomes. 

Merit and Impacts

           

For the current study, the researchers are attempting to understand how much of the content should be placed and integrated in the XXX web interface. The study will also evaluate the strategies used by individuals on grouping of the information to create efficient navigators and sub navigators. XXX has been acknowledged for its efforts to provide client satisfactions. Therefore the outcome of the proposed research will be direct positive emotional response from the end users as they make travel arrangement. The Principal Investigator of the proposed study has conducted numerous research projects in the cognitive and information transfer, human factor, and technology disciplines. Furthermore, she already established relationships with institutions to understand the effect of graphical interface and web design, which may be associated with development of efficient web site for various end users. With everyone concerned about the improving consumer satisfaction within the organization, it is expected that the outcome of proposed study will benefit consumers and scholars both locally and on an international level. The cohort experiences between consumers and XXX usability research team will create network systems that will exert positive influences for exploring further development related to perception, cognition and visualization research areas.

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So in a nut shell, I will be examining the organization and grouping of their menus, submenus and information within their web interface. The goal of this research is to minimize and reduce end users time spending looking for information.