本研究嘗試將源於使用性工程的啟發式評估法導入政治傳播研究。除建立以內容、視覺設計、結構與導覽、機能、互動、整體經驗等六大面向的政黨網站評估指標外，尚以民進黨與國民黨官方網站為例，從使用者角度檢視其設計。研究結果指出：(1)民進黨與國民黨網站內容皆更新不足及編排雜亂；(2)兩黨網站導覽項目均建構不良；(3)民進黨網站首頁視覺設計編排良好，國民黨網站則底圖過於雜亂，並且首頁偏左，視覺未達平衡；(4)兩站均有若干功能與連結失效；(5)雙方均缺乏即時互動設計，例如沒有討論區以及E-mail皆形同虛設無法使用；(6)總的來說，民進黨網站整體使用經驗略較國民黨為佳。與傳統研究方法比較後發現：啟發式評估應用容易、成本低廉，是一種可以實用、有效的發掘使用性問題的方法，值得採用。此外，亦可將之應用於競選傳播中，如評估競選總部配置與造勢活動安排等。
This paper introduces heuristic evaluation, which originated in usability engineering, into political communication research. Six criteria, including content, structure & navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience, are constructed to assess the user interfaces design of political party web site. The WWW sites of Taiwan's two major political parties, DPP and KMT, are analyzed by the method of heuristic evaluation. The findings indicate the DPP WWW site is better than his counterpart in overall experience of usability. In addition, heuristic evaluation is compared with conventional methodologies in communication research. It is argued that heuristic evaluation is a powerful tool to identify usability problems in user interfaces, and also suited to evaluate events of election campaign.
