Satisfiers and dissatisfiers: A two-factor model for ...

1 Great or terrible sopinionsandpreferences,oncriteriadevelo pedforothermedia, ( ,Conger&Mason1998;Small,1998),oraresuppo rtedbyempiricalevidence( ,Spool,Jared,Scanton,Schroeder,Snyder,&D eAn-gelo,1999;UserInterfaceEngineering,1 996;Wilkinson,Bennett,&Oliver,1997).Onex aminationoftheseexistingchecklists,three uncertaintiesemerge:(1)itisunclearwhethe rthereisaninclusivecollectionofdesignfac tors;(2)itisunclearwhethersomeofthesefac torsaremoreusefulthanotherfactorsandinwh ataspect;and(3)itisunclearwhetheraddress ingthesefactorsissufficienttomakeuserssa tisfiedwiththeWebsites,tokeeptheirintere stintheWebsites, ,mostchecklistspayscantattentiontotheaff ectiveandmotivationalaspectsoftheWebenvi ronment, (1)makeaWebsiteusableandserviceable,avoi dingusersfrustrationordissatisfaction;(2 )createmorestimulating,visuallypleasing, comprehensive,andcommerciallyviableWebsi tes.

2 And(3)helpattractuserstoaWebsite,maintai ntheirinterestintheWebsite, ,mayrevisittheWebsite, , (Spooletal.,1999), ;Revised4 April1999;accepted6 June2000 2000 JohnWiley&Sons,Inc. c (14):1253 1268,2000 The purpose of this study is to investigate Website de-sign factors and their impact from a theoretical examining the work place and the Web environment,we believe that the underlying goals for creating a motivat-ing Website are similar to those for creating a motivatingworkplace: to provide the conditions and environment thatminimize user (employee) dissatisfaction and maximizeuser (employee) satisfaction by allowing them to focus onand achieve high task performance.

3 The researchers use ananalogy to Herzberg s hygiene-motivator theory, and pro-pose a two-factor model that can be used to distinguishthose Website design factors that ensure essential function-ality (thus hygiene factors ) from those that increase users satisfaction and motivate their return to a Website (thusmotivator factors ). In other words, designers, who want notonly to minimize user dissatisfaction but also to encouragecontinued use, should be aware of both hygiene and moti-vator factors , and use the former as a necessary prerequisitefor the latter. Empirical data are collected to show that Webusers can use the hygiene and motivator concepts to identifythe two types of design article is organized as follows.

4 The next section isthe literature review on current Web evaluation studies, andmotivational and job satisfaction theories in organizationalbehavior. The following section describes the empiricalstudy methodology including Phase I for identifying designfactors, and Phase II for identifying the hygiene and moti-vator characteristics of the factors . Finally, the researchersdiscuss the implications of the findings, some limitations,and directions for future ReviewWebsite Evaluation StudiesWebsite evaluations or usability studies have been fruit-ful in the past several years. They include conceptual dis-cussions on what should be evaluated and how to do it ( ,Instone, 1997; Nielsen s Alertbox columns).

5 Several peoplerecommend applying the traditional usability criteria ( ,Nielsen, 1993; Shneiderman, 1998) to the Web environment( , Instone, 1997; Levi & Conrad, 1996). There are otherstudies that develop criteria specifically for the Web. Mostof the work in Web evaluation provides heuristics or check-lists for Website evaluation with few or unknown theoreti-cal bases and unclear empirical data support ( , Alex-ander & Tate, 1999; Flanders & Willis, 1998; Keeker,1997). Among the few who used theoretical frameworks forWebsite evaluations, Small (1998) uses the ARCS modelfrom instructional design as a base and has developedWebMAC (Web Motivational Assessment Checklist).

6 Con-ger and Mason (1998) propose applications of theories toWebsite designs from other disciplines such as manage-ment, psychology, and political science. Smith (1997) re-views the evaluation criteria for print materials, and arguesthat the criteria in most cases could be applied to theInternet domain. He then developed a toolbox of the handful of empirical studies, Wilkinson, Ben-nett, and Oliver (1997) first took a bottom-up approach bycompiling Internet evaluation criteria from differentsources. Then they asked 30 Web evaluation experts tojudge the importance of the criteria and whether a particularindicator rated for information quality or Website results of the survey showed that 71 information qualityindicators and 67 Website quality indicators can be used toevaluate the quality of Internet information sources.

7 With asimilar focus on Internet information resource quality,Borges, Morales, and Rodriguez (1998) started from Niel-sen s (1993) heuristics guidelines to evaluate 10 Websitesfor universities and colleges. Next, they did user testing ofthe guidelines by redesigning and retesting the universityWebsites, and then tested commercial Websites using theguidelines. Revised guidelines eventually were generatedfor designing usable Web pages. Spool et al. (1999) focusedon information retrieval tasks and conducted usability stud-ies on several large companies these studies in Web-user interface design andevaluation, the testing or use of theoretical models is stillrare.

8 Many empirical studies of interactive computer usehave no theoretical orientation. Data is collected, but nounderlying model or theory of the process exists to beconfirmed or refuted. Such a model or theory would be veryuseful because with many design decisions there are toomany alternative proposals to test by trial and error. Astrong theory or performance model could reduce the set ofplausible alternatives to a manageable number for testing (Baecker, Grudin, Buxton, & Greenberg, 1995, p. 573).User Information Seeking TasksExisting user interface studies and other studies indicatethat many potential factors may be involved when studyingusers interacting with user interfaces.

9 The interaction be-tween a user s task and the user interface characteristics iswell known. The cognitive fit theory (Vessey, 1991) ex-plains that performance will be enhanced when spatial in-formation representations facilitate the spatial or perceptualtype of tasks and symbolic information representations fa-cilitate analytical type of tasks. According to Marchionini(1995), users information-seeking tasks or searching be-haviors make use of two classes of strategies browsingand analytical strategies. Browsing is an informal and nat-ural information seeking approach that depends heavily onthe information environment and the user s recognition ofrelevant information.

10 Analytical strategies, in contrast, de-pend on careful planning, recall of query terms, iterativequery reformulation, and examination of results. The em-pirical evidence by Spool et al. (1999) led them to believethat because surfing is significantly different from informa-tion retrieval on the Web, designing for one may actuallyhurt a design for the other, and that it may not possible todesign one site to meet both type or purpose of a Website usually implies thekind of tasks users can do with it, although this is not1254 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE December 2000necessarily true.