As Figure 2 shows, Google Maps is the most usable as the users could easily obtain the
desirable results and the lowest number of failures was observed. The less usable web site is
MapQuest.
The qualitative data gathered through both the questionnaires and most significantly through
the “Thinking Aloud Method”, encouraged the process of understanding the user’s needs and
expectations as it was possible to identify the users’ beliefs and thoughts regarding each web
site separately. The importance of the qualitative data gathered could be clearly proved with
the following example. As it can be seen from Figure 2, the difference between the web sites
of Multimap and Google Maps is relatively small, however it was observed that the preferable
website from the user perspective was the web site of Multimap as it gave the impression of a
better organised interface, with more links, functions and services.