Purpose and Objectives: The purpose of this report is to identify the nominated website www.exxonmobil.com.

au and provide its overview and description. The objective is to analyse the website and state comments by justifying the reasons.

The ExxonMobil group of companies in Australia have played a significant role in the development of Australias oil and gas resources and has a business history in this country stretching back over 110 years. These companies are subsidiaries of Exxon Mobil Corporation, the world's leading petroleum and petrochemical company. ExxonMobil's Australian subsidiaries have made significant contributions to the economic development of this nation aimed at meeting the growing energy demands of our community in a safe and cost effective way. ExxonMobil Australia is involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas, petroleum refining and supply of fuels (including natural gas). Its affiliated companies also supply lubricants, bitumen and chemical products. Safety as its core, its commitment to high ethical standards, legal compliance, and integrity is reflected in their global policies and practices. The nominated website has its site map which provides information with subsections as listed below: Energy Energy outlook, saving energy, producing energy, vehicle technology, technology summary Safety & environment Safety in our operations, environmental performance, workplace, climate change, emergency preparedness Community & development ExxonMobil Foundation malaria, math and science, women's economic opportunity, human rights, national content, worldwide giving, Corporate Citizenship Report About us Who we are, what we do, where we work, current issues Consumers, Contact us, Investors Media News releases, speeches, publications, events, advertising news, feeds, apps Careers Career opportunities, employment policies, recruiting scams Auxiliary

Global Websites Copyright, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Accessibility There are many positive aspects of the website. The look and feel being straight and simple without too many pictures, graphics, flash works and high contrasts or dark background. The light colour background makes the viewing experience more pleasant, easier and much quicker to download. The main positive point which needs to be considered it is being highly content rich. I dont see any negative aspects or a need for any improvement for its excellent navigation throughout the webpages and its partner company websites with a friendly user interface. I have identified two people from different age group. My nephew a 15 year old and my friend a 40 year old. My nephew, still in school didnt liked the website for not having flashy colours, animations while introducing the website, graphics with the same plain light coloured background and non-dynamic webpages throughout its partner websites as well. My friend who is 40 year old and a self-employed person liked it for its content rich, ease on eyes, elegant feel and quick navigation into its partner websites. The main features he listed were for its consistency of the colour combinations and style has been maintained throughout the website, styling even for its partner websites and global locations. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of how people design, implement, and use interactive computer systems, and how computers affect individuals, organizations, and society. HCI is a research area of increasingly central significance to computer science, other scientific and engineering disciplines, and an ever expanding array of application domains. This more prominent role follows from the widely perceived need to expand the focus of computer science research beyond traditional hardware and software issues to attempt to better understand how technology can more effectively support people in accomplishing their goals. The effectiveness of Human Computer Interaction depends upon certain important parameters such as usability and comfortability, which would encourage the end-users to get the services safely and more reliably. It becomes essential to understand the various usability factors under different perspectives which are highly essential to be considered to design the websites. Human visual search plays an important role in many humancomputer interaction (HCI) tasks to predict overall performance outcomes, such as whether people will be able to find the information needed to complete an HCI task, and understand many human processes that interact in visual search. I personally believe that a model of active vision should address the four questions posed by active vision, the answers to which are important to designers and those interested in HCI: (a) when and why do we move our eyes? (b) Where do we move our eyes? (c) What information in the environment can be perceived when the eyes are held steady? (d) What information from the environment is integrated between eye movements? The technology itself has changed considerably over time: At the same time, technology innovation cycles become increasingly faster. The trend is aggravating the situation especially for older adults, as the understanding of how technology works is to a large extent formed by upbringing and sociocultural factors. Older adults were educated in times when technical devices were far less ubiquitous and complex. A mental model of how technology works, built in a former time, should interfere with, or at least should not be sufficient for proper interaction design requires a broad understanding of contextual aspects as well as their interplay. Although people are the most intelligent systems we know, and peoples emotion appears to play a vital role in regulating and guiding intelligence, it does not mean there might not be a better way to implement some of these goals in machines. It may be possible that

there is something like the wheel, which has no precise human or animal equivalent, but which provides for some of the same locomotion goals. There may exist a kind of alien intelligent living system, something we have never encountered, which achieves its intelligence without having anything like emotion. Although humans are the most marvellous example of intelligence we have, and we wish to build systems that are natural for humans to understand, these reasons for building human-like systems should not limit us to thinking only of human abilities. We counter many cultural aspects concern language-related issues on a day to day basis. E.g. the use of pictograms and icons. Since standardized designs are highly desirable but intricate on global markets, the understandability of icons, beyond national language boundaries and cultural contexts is of high importance. There is empirical evidence that most icon designs rely on representations and analogies that may not exist, or may have different connotations outside the western world A typical example is thewithin European cultureswidely known icon representing a slashed musical note, which indicates that a mobile phone is in silent mode. While this icon is perfectly understandable within western cultures, the icon is completely misunderstood by Indians, because traditional Indian music does not use written symbols for music. Thus, if we aim at a culture-fair interface design, integrating and addressing users from different backgrounds, we should also integrate the knowledge of other cultures. User around the world may differ in perception, cognition and style of thinking, cultural assumptions and values. For example, American tends to classify things on the basis of functions. Their ways of thinking are analytical and abstract. Chinese tends to group things based on their interrelationship and thematic relationship; their ways of thinking are synthetic. If different cultures (e.g. collectivist vs. individualist societies) require different interfaces, it is reasonable to assume that this must have consequences for usability methodologies and the usability evaluation process [58]. One of the research duties is to clarify, to which degree western approaches can be transferred to other cultural contexts and vice versa. For example, depending of their cultural background users vary in their willingness to articulate their thoughts during a test. Studies have shown evidence that Indian users have significant problems in engaging role-playing situations which are required in methods like thinking-aloud protocols. Trends like ubiquitous computing and the possibility to connect devices and networks with other devices and networks change our personal and professional lives substantially. New approaches emphasise that user-centred research and design must consider, how new technologies and services may influence and how they change the environments, in which they will be used The challenge will be to include ethical, personal and wider societal concerns into the design model by understanding human values. Taking into account human values, therefore, will be a very different undertaking compared with seeking to attain the design goals of efficiency, effectiveness and utility. I wish to conclude the determinants to decide the sustainability of its user interface in future would be more from the country specific cultural strategies only as the website looks very professional with elegant styling, content rich and has great navigation throughout the webpages including its partner company websites providing a seamless user interface experience. I have even compared with its competitors like shell (www.shell.com.au), BP (www.bp.com) and but I find exxon mobil website fared well on its look and feel, highly rich content, service and support while the major differentiator remains its constant updates and customer self-service.

References:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/nsfworkshop/hcireport.html http://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume58/number1/9249-3413 www.exxonmobil.com.au http://www.humtec.rwth-aachen.de/files/coma_10_ziefle_jakobs_2.pdf http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370024.2011.625237 http://www.tlu.ee/~kpata/uusmeedia/kuuti1.pdf Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000 By Ronald M. Baecker (http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gjm6FpMUTXgC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=journals+and +articles+on+effective+human+computer+interaction&ots=Ri8utJzOmQ&sig=3OOE8i_pcGd3MM10cdJ_ FJb3TRU#v=onepage&q=journals%20and%20articles%20on%20effective%20human%20computer%20int eraction&f=false) http://www.ijsselsteijn.nl/papers/Picard2003.pdf