User Needs Analysis and Evaluation of Portals

As specified in the ISO 13407 standard (ISO, 1999), user-centred design begins with a thorough understanding of the needs and requirements of the users. User needs analysis (or Knowledge Elicitation) and evaluation methods in HCI are a critical function to the success of requirements and design gathering (Maiden et al., 1995), usability testing and user evaluation stages of software development (Zaphiris & Kurniawan, 2001).