Enhancing human Web interactions in terms of adoption modeling

Over the last twenty years there has been a steady development in the modelling of user adoption and diffusion behaviour in relation to the uptake of new ideas. This modeling being both generic for all innovations and in particular to IT technology. This paper focuses on applying this into the design of Web applications. This is in accord with the increasing use of Web interfaces across organisations' corporate and supporting applications, and the dramatic increase in the number of potential users in the resulting systems. Along with this trend to connect more and more of an organization's staff and clients together via Web interfaces, has been the rise of user-centric design models which place user requirements higher on the priorities list in system design and also places user satisfaction as a major performance and quality indicator. This paper puts forward that adoption theory can be used be used in the design, implementation and management of web applications and into the resulting Web information systems in enhancing the human-computer interactions of users. In presenting relevant modelling ideas, examples are drawn from a substantial case study.