On The Evaluation of Adaptive Web Systems
Hossein Sadat, Ali Akbar Ghorbani · 2004
Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS) affect the way most of the Web-based applications are developed and used. One of the application domains affected by AHS is the domain of Web-based Support Systems (WSS), which is part of the more general online information systems domain. Since the very beginning of the research on AHS, different systems have been developed for different domains and application areas (such as educational systems, online information systems, etc.). Besides some general features, which are expected to be present in any software system, AHSs have their own extra features that make them different from non-adaptive systems. Through a careful study of a large number of adaptive hypermedia systems, a hierarchy of primary features based on which one can evaluate different adaptive web systems is proposed. An evaluation weighting scheme is also proposed for the given features. A comparative analysis is carried out for 4 major adaptive hypermedia systems (AHA!, InterBook, SETA and SeAN). The results of our detailed evaluation put AHA! at the top followed by SETA, SeAN and InterBook, respectively. 1