The Challenge of Usability Evaluation of Online Social Networks with a Focus on Facebook

Abstract: In today’s era online social networks are getting extensive popularity among internet users. People are using online social networks for different purposes like sharing information, chatting with friends, family and planning to hang out. It is then no surprise that online social network should be easy to use and easily understandable. Previously many researchers have evaluated different online social networks but there is no such study which addresses usability concerns about online social network with a focus on Facebook on an academic level (using students as subjects). The main rationale behind this study is to find out efficiency of different usability testing techniques from social network’s point of view, with a focus on Facebook, and issues related to usability. To conduct this research, we have adopted the combination of both qualitative and quantitative approach. Graduate students from BTH have participated in usability tests. Our findings are that although think aloud is more efficient then remote testing, but this difference is not very significant. We found from survey that different usability issues are in Facebook profile, media, Picture Tagging, Chatting etc.