| With the emergence of advanced software development technologies, web sites have become increasingly dynamic and provide greater functionality. One class of business software that has seen an increased focus on web-based implementations are customer relationship management (CRM) systems. As the complexity and functionality of these web-based applications increase, usability engineering also becomes more important. Heuristic evaluations are a way to perform a usability analysis without the necessity of involving actual users. Rather, experts in the field of human-computer interaction and usability evaluate a system's user interface based on a set of defined principles (i.e. heuristics).;This thesis investigates the heuristics relevant to web-based CRM systems. To answer this question, a two-phased, mixed approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed. First, usability experts were asked to review existing heuristics. Second, users of CRM systems evaluated this new list for validation.;The results show that there is a need for domain-specific heuristics for web-based CRM systems. In addition, it was shown that general heuristics and heuristics developed for similar classes of applications are rated as more applicable than heuristics developed for very different classes of applications. |
