The project web portal quality function deployement.

Esse, Martin ; Majerik, Marian

1. INTRODUCTION

The web portals are today a frequent source to obtaining information about something what the people are interested in. So whenever the people need to find and know any information in the area of various fields, they are turning to the internet in lieu of any other source. Web portals influence sundry aspects of the value proposition, are more adaptable and better in marking users (Daetz, Barnard & Norman, 1995).

The Virtual Healthcare Quality Center (VHCQC) allows managers, doctors and healthcare professionals to attain the fundamental knowledge and skills of certified healthcare organization managers via the availability of detailed managerial healthcare glossary, e-learning, e-implementation and e-improvement services, aiming to give a strong incentive and special abilities to markedly improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of patient/client oriented healthcare organizational services (Zgodavova, 2006).

In this paper we conducted whose objectives are the following:

* to evaluate the present of the Improhealth VHCQC web portal,

* to recognize and prioritize viewer demands to further improve the effectiveness of web portal,

* to identify and prioritize the technical requirements that can gratify the user's requirements.

2. QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT (QFD)

QFD was developed in Japan in the late 1960s by Professors Shigeru Mizuno and Yoji Akao. QFD is tool for designing producing (service) processes in response to customer's demands by transplanting what the customers want into what the organization produces. It is systematic planning process that was created to help a project team bring together and manage all the elements needed to define, design, and produce a product (or delivers a service) that would meet or exceed customer needs.

The major tool through which QFD is implemented is diagram House of Quality (HoQ). The diagram is known as HoQ because its architecture is similar to a house. Like a normal house (which has foundation, walls and roof), HoQ has a number of components (Islam, Ahmed & Alias, 2007), which are:

* customer requirements

* technical requirements

* relationship between customer and technical requirements

* relationship among technical requirements

* prioritized customer requirements

* prioritized technical requirements

Generally, full application of the QFD methodology includes more steps; these steps are incorporated into a popular 4-phase model, the 4 phase are:

I. Product planning: Customer requirements to technical requirements

II. Design planning: Technical requirements to part characteristics

III. Process planning: Part characteristics to process characteristics

IV. Production planning: Process characteristics to production requirements

Clearly, Phase I, Product planning, is the phase with the most leverage (Zgodavova & Lengyel, 2008). It's here that one has the opportunity to "define the right product".

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

We used two approaches for data collection--online survey and focus groups and focus groups included three kinds of respondents, namely:

* Customers (web portal users)

* Developers

* IT experts

The list of technical properties contained 75 technical requirements related to the Improhealth VHCQC web portal (Tab.1). These were divided into six categories: Network, Server, Backup, Security, Application and Programming Language, and Web Design and User Interface. Having obtained the prioritized requirements, these were identified based upon the interview with developers and customers.

The matrix on Fig. 1 shows the relationship between web portal user's and technical requirements and it was used to represent graphically the degree of influence between each technical requirement. Usually, three symbols are used to represent this relationship (Table 2).

If any technical requirement is not related with any of the users requirements then the corresponding cell in the matrix is kept blank. Once we have identified all possible relationship between every pair of user and technical requirements, we can determine the weight of all the technical requirements. IT experts selected after profound review 50 properties (Tab.3) appointed to processing through QFD method.

After identification of users and technical requirements, we constructed the HoQ. With the help of few IT experts we established the relationship matrix for both types of requirements. HoQ is shown on Fig. 1.

We have obtained the customer's requests from the questionnaire which was meant for the viewers of the Improhealth web portal. This questionnaire has obtained questions of which we have got a summary about concrete customer's requests for a more understandable and more simply work with the Improhealth VHCQC web portal.

Following the requirements for realization which we have evaluated from the questionnaire as the most important: Usability, Information Quality, Interactivity, Page Transparence, Sensibleness of Menu, Search Tool, Print Possibility, Colour Scheme, Web portal components position, Blind friendly. We obtained properties from the article "The Study of Kansei Engineering Applied to the VHCQC Web Portal".

4. CONCLUSION

Characteristics of usefulness, usability and desirability play a central role in the good design of all digital products and digital environments such as web portal. The VHCQC web portal that embeds affective appeal is seen to offer user positive experience visiting the web portal services.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Web portal is an important channel of any organisation through which it disseminates information about the organization. Every web portal has its intended users customers and they have their own requirements. To maximize the customer satisfaction, organizations are expected to pay adequate attention to fulfill their expectations and requirements. As it has been illustrate in the paper.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our acknowledgement goes to Prof. Kristina Zgodavova, PhD. our PhD. study adviser which markedly contributed in development of this paper and to the team of portal designers: Kristina Lengyelova, Lubomir Lengyel and Slavomir Beznak.

6. REFERENCES

Daetz, D., Barnard & B.Norman, R. (1995): Customer integration: The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Leader's Guide for Decision Making. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., USA 1995, ISBN-10: 0-471-13277-2

Islam, R., Ahmed, M. & Alias, M.H. (2007): Application of Quality Function Deployment in redesigning website: A Case Study on TV3. Int. J. Business Information Systems, Vol.2, No.2, Copyright (c) 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., pages number 195-216

QFD 2000 software, For customer LED design, User Manual for Quality Function Deployment Version 2.0, Total Quality Software 1999

Zgodavova, K. (2006). Web Portal of Tools, Methods and Case Studies of Quality Management, project of Slovak Ministry of Education KEGA 3-4121-06, 2006

Zgodavova, K. (2006). Improhealth Collaborative SK/06/B/F/PP-177443 Vocatioonal Education and Training for Qaulity of Lifr through eHealthcare & Well-Being, Leonardo da Vinci pilot project, 2006

Zgodavova, K. & Lengyel, E. (2008). Improving Quality, Performance and Cost-Effectiveness of Healthcare Organizations through the "IMPROHEALTH" web portal, In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Emerging e-Learning Technologies and Applications,2008, Stara Lesna (Slovakia)

Table 1. The list of technical requirements (with the quantify
date of all technical properties)

Technical properties (quantity: 75)

Network (1-3) Security (15-20)
(quantity: 3) (quantity: 6)

Server (4-11) Application and Programming Language
(quantity: 8) (21-46) (quantity: 26)

Back up (12-14) Web design and User Interface (47-75)
(quantity: 3) (quantity: 29)

Table 2. The relationship in HoQ diagram

Symbol Meaning Weight

 (a) Strong relationship 9
 (b) Medium relationship 3
 (c) Weak relationship 1

Table 3. The list of selected technical requirements (in the table
are shown some properties of total quantify (50 properties)
only)

Technical requirements

Network
1 Giga byte Ethernet network

Server
4 Media streaming server (audio/video)
5 Database server
9 E-mail server

Back up
10 Continuous back up (mirror)

Security
11 Multi level access
12 Use of id and user password for authentication and authorization
14 Firewall

Application and Programming Language
15 Use HTML (Hyper Text Mark up Language)
22 Minimize flash file of up to 25 Kb
23 Double checking the information before uploading

Web design and User Interface
27 Navigation link of up to 3 words per link
28 Use color to distinguish visited and unvisited links
33 Only one dominant image on one page
34 Use meaningful graphics that relate to the contents
40 Archive old contents
48 Provide a site map
50 Blind friendly