Web Interaction Environment

A modelling concept defined as a particular audience group's set of intrinsic characteristics upon which tailored evaluation procedures can be applied to a website. Introduced by Lopes and Carrico (2008), WIEs organize user characteristics across four domains: Users (abilities, disabilities, culture), Devices (input/output modalities), Usage Situations (environmental context like lighting or connectivity), and User Intentions (goals like information seeking or transactions). The framework enables teams to explore synergies and differences between audiences, identify common grounds shared across groups, and conduct more targeted universal usability assessments of the web at macro scale.