# User Experience, Functionality and Aesthetics Evaluation in an Academic Multi-Site Web Ecosystem
## 4 Methodology
### Focus-Group Interview  
The quantitative data collected through querying the database were complemented by qualitative feedback regarding the ecosystem, directly from expert individuals who interact with it on a daily basis. These individuals included people responsible for offices or activities that have their own specific websites; content editors from specific departments who implement their office's Web content strategy; and members of the institution's Webteam with wider editing capabilities, who also have a coordinating role during a website's initial implementation. It should be noted that many participants were also involved with the university in an academic capacity, due to the intimate nature of the institution. As such, their feedback not only represented the opinions of content managers but also incorporated elements from the point of view of teachers, former students, and academic researchers. The members of the focus group were selected through purposive sampling in an effort to include people with a variety of roles. The total number of involved experts was nine, and the meeting was held on 3 January 2024. The meeting was coordinated by the research team and lasted a little over 90 min. Both the duration and the number of interviewed experts were within the customary values for focus-group interviews ([PERSON], 2020). Table 2 presents a short summary of the participants with information about their relationship with the ecosystem and some limited demographic data. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \# & **Age** & **Gender** & **Use in Years** & **Attribute** & **Relation with the Ecosystem** \\ \hline P1 & 20–30 & M & 3 & Graduate & Webteam designer and content manager for numerous websites \\ P2 & 30–40 & F & 6 & Lab Researcher & Webteam content manager for all integrated websites \\ P3 & 20–30 & F & 2 & PhD Candidate & Content manager for limited departmental and postgraduate program websites \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: A short summary of the focus-group interview participants. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c} **Decision** \\ **User ID** \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline
72 & 13095 & 4 & 1 & 28-11-19 & 29-11-19 & 1 & 14 \\  & & & 06:40 p.m. & 08:24 a.m. & & & \\
73 & 13128 & 38 & 2 & 03-12-19 & 03-12-19 & 13 & 13 \\
74 & 13130 & 56 & 2 & 04-12-19 & 04 12-19 & 13 & 22 \\  & & & 01:13 p.m. & 01:18 p.m. & & & \\
75 & 13139 & 31 & 1 & 05-12-19 & 05-12-19 & 19 & 5 \\  & & & 02:54 p.m. & 03:02 p.m. & & & \\
76 & 13136 & 41 & 1 & 06-12-19 & 06-12-19 & 1 & 15 \\  & & & 05:33 p.m. & 07:00 p.m. & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Example of data from the _requests_ module of the database. The focus-group interview included an introduction section so that the participants who were not acquainted could become familiar with each other. After that, a series of guiding questions were posed in a non-strict manner. These questions revolved around three major axes, namely the aesthetics, functionality, and visitor UX of individual websites utilizing the ecosystem's common framework, the content manager UX, and features offered by the ecosystem's content management platform, and finally, the overall assessment of the system and the suggestion of changes or the addition of new functionality. The focus-group interview concluded with an open-ended evaluation question acting as a closing section, thus implementing all the major structure points customary in the focus-group methodology [45]. In terms of aesthetics, the qualitative evaluation focused on questions that aimed to determine whether the system's capabilities were able to meet the website supervisor's expectations and not a generic evaluation of the aesthetic value of the final product. Table 3 presents an overview of the guiding questions.