Usability evaluation and user-centered redesign of an academic journal platform

Academic journal platforms play an important role in supporting scientific publication and information accessibility in higher education. However, many academic journal platforms still experience usability issues related to navigation, interface consistency, visual design, and task efficiency, which may negatively affect user experience and system effectiveness. This study aims to evaluate and redesign the usability of an academic journal platform in the Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Diponegoro, using a User-Centered Design (UCD) approach. Usability evaluation was conducted using Maze Usability Testing and Heuristic Evaluation, involving 20 students and alumni and 8 evaluators comprising teaching staff and UI/UX experts. The evaluation focused on five usability aspects, namely learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. The findings identified several major usability problems, particularly in interface consistency, navigation structure, information density, and feature accessibility. Based on these findings, a redesigned prototype was developed and re-evaluated using the same usability methods. The results showed significant improvements in usability across all evaluated aspects. Learnability increased from 53.2% to 93.6%, while the average task completion time decreased from 56.3 seconds to 11.3 seconds. In addition, the severity rating for memorability, errors, and satisfaction decreased from major and minor usability problem categories to cosmetic problem categories after redesign implementation. These findings indicate that the proposed redesign successfully improved usability, task efficiency, and overall user experience of the academic journal platform. The study also demonstrates the effectiveness of combining Maze Usability Testing, Heuristic Evaluation, and UCD approaches to enhance the usability of academic information systems.