I trust the following concept and proposal ( based on his PhD thesis) by a fellow Director of mine in auDA, (incedently an Org Member of the Australian ALS, ISOC-AU) sent to the gtld-guide list, may be found interesting, informative and useful to many of you... Should the community or RALO's / ALAC ever desire to discuss his research work and outcomes further with him, I am more than happy to arrange a briefing call or oportunity for presentation at a meeting... Kindest regards, CLO ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Josh Rowe <josh@email.nu> Date: 2008/12/16 Subject: Improving Internet Usability - A Framework For Domain Name Policy Evaluation To: gtld-guide@icann.org In a world with 1.5 billion Internet users (and growing), usability and utility of the Internet are key. Domain names are a fundamental part of the Internet's user interface. End users use domain names to assess the credibility of a destination (Nielsen, J., 1999). End users spent between 22% to 25% of their time looking at the domain name in search engine results (Cutrell, E. & Guan, Z., 2007). Improving the usability of the Internet depends upon effective domain name policy. The benefits of more usable domain names include: higher sales, higher customer satisfaction, higher productivity, and reduced support costs (Usability Professionals' Association, 2008). Domain name policies worldwide vary considerably between, and sometimes even within, countries. As a consequence, end users are inconvenienced by contradictory domain name policies, diminishing the predictability of an entity's domain name, and thus decreasing usability for end users. A set of criteria has been developed, backed by academic research, with which policy makers can evaluate their domain name policies, in order to improve the usability of domain names for Internet end users. There is significant existing research examining either domain names or usability in isolation. However, academic research examining the intersection of the two is scarce. The research that does exist, in this somewhat new and untried field of study, describes domain names as part of the web user interface. This foundation concept is built upon by this study. It was established that the predictability (and thus usability) of domain names relies on effective domain name policy. The importance of effective domain name policy is evident in the way that the non-standardised and widely delegated process of domain name policy development leads to unpredictable and inconsistent domain names. These attributes lead to poor usability, observable in decreased productivity, sales, revenues and customer satisfaction, as well as increased training and support costs, development time and costs, and maintenance costs. In order to address the problem of poor domain name usability, a framework for domain name policy evaluation is proposed (see below). This new framework seeks to address usability and quality concerns by treating the domain name system as a user interface. The framework sets out criteria which allow domain name policy makers to critically assess domain name policies with end users in mind. The framework has the potential to set an international standard for the critical evaluation of domain name policy, and become the basis for further research. The framework can be used to evaluate the domain name policy for any domain name space, regardless of its position in the overall domain name hierarchy. Whilst this study focuses on Internet domain names, the framework can also be usefully applied to internal or intranet domain names. A Framework For Domain Name Policy Evaluation Criteria for domain name policy evaluation and Example(s) A. Who are the intended users for the domain name space? Consider end users of the domain name (not the domain name registrants). e.g. The intended users for the Australian community geographic domain names (act.au, nsw.au, nt.au, qld.au, sa.au, tas.au, vic.au, wa.au) are listed as: All members of the Australian Community, Business and Industry, Local Community Groups/Organisations, Tourism . Local, State/Territory, National and International (One City One Site, 2002). B. How is the domain name space meant to be interpreted by the intended users? e.g. The '.com.au' domain name space is for Australian commercial entities (auDA, 2005). C. How else could the domain name space be interpreted by the intended users? e.g. Italy's '.it' ccTLD (IANA, 2008a) can be interpreted as the abbreviation for 'Information Technology' or the English word 'it'. D. Who are the unintended users for the domain name space? Consider end users of the domain name (not the domain name registrants) who are not the intended users for the domain name space. e.g. A Canadian entrepreneur has struck a deal (Richards, 2007) with the country of Cameroon (.cm) to redirect mistyped .com domains names to an advertising page. Under the deal, any request for an unregistered .cm site will default to an advertising page . as opposed to the company who happens to own the .com domain name. The entrepreneur is said to be negotiating similar deals with Colombia (.co) and Oman (.om) which could be confused with '.com', as well as Niger (.ne) and Ethiopia (.et) which could be confused with '.net'. E. How could the domain name space be interpreted by the unintended users? e.g. The country names of Australia and Austria are sometimes confused (Mail Online, 2007). Similarly, a user not familiar with the domain name system could misinterpret '.au' as the ccTLD for Austria instead of Australia. F. Is the domain name space consistent compared with other domain name spaces for the intended or untended users? e.g. Educational domain name spaces include 'edu.au', 'ac.nz' and 'sch.uk'. For the 250 ccTLDs there are 111 'edu', 44 'ac' and 13 'sch' second level domain names (Chan, 2008). G. What other semantic meanings does the domain name space have for the intended or untended users? e.g. VeriSign reportedly (Big Empire, 2007) pays the Pacific Island of Tuvalu $2.2 million dollars per annum to operate the .tv domain; targeted at the TV and entertainment industry. Laos has handed over .la to the LA Names Corporation; who misinform their web site visitors that '.LA is the official internet address for Los Angeles' (LA Names Corporation, 2008, p. 1) when the official ccTLD database says otherwise (IANA, 2008b). Cue Clothing turned to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for a perfect semantic affinity between their company name and the .cc domain extension. Guernsey's .gg ccTLD presents the obvious domain extension for horse betting companies. H. How easy is the domain name space to spell for intended or unintended users? e.g. Users from the United States expect 'center' where as British users will expect 'centre' (Top Hoster Center, 2007). I. How easy is the domain name space to type for intended or unintended users? e.g. Consider the input device (for example United States layout keyboard, mobile phone keypad, etc) and the end user's proficiency at using the input device. One entrepreneur recently auctioned 264 'circle shape' .com domains using the standard QWERTY keyboard (Nottiger, 2008). J. How easy is the domain name space to say and pronounce for intended or unintended users? e.g. The domain name space 'naturbruksgymn.se' may be simple to say for a Swede, but those from other countries may find it difficult to pronounce. K. How memorable is the domain name space for intended or unintended users? e.g. A memorable domain name does not necessarily have to be short; consider which of the two domain names would more likely be recalled, BobJonesSurfShop.com or BJSShop.com (Implied by Design, 2006). L. How meaningful is the domain name space in the languages and scripts of the intended or untended users? e.g. '.nu' is the country code top-level domain for the Pacific Island of Niue (IANA, 2007). 'Nu' means 'now' in Swedish (Google Translate, 2008b) and 'nude' or 'naked' in French and Portuguese (Google Translate, 2008a). Bibliography Rowe, J. (2008). Improving Internet Usability - A Framework For Domain Name Policy Evaluation, Retrieved from http://domainusability.com/ Contact Josh Rowe josh@email.nu DomainUsability.com -- Cheryl Langdon-Orr (CLO)