MEDINA: a case study for multichannel Web design

Summary form only given. Nowadays, Web-based applications are facing new challenges both in improving their relations with final users and in diminishing the efforts necessary to update and change product features after its deployment. On one hand, new projects are considering the possibility to provide users with information in different communicative ways, through different devices and for different needs and requirements; on the other, they face with another key aspect of particular relevance for Web applications: maintainability. In an always changing and evolving context like the Internet, Web sites have to face and reflect the fast evolution of technology and user needs over time. For this reason, the possibility for designers and developers to change contents, information structure and navigational schema without having to redesign the application is going to be mandatory. In this sense, multichannel availability, consistency and maintainability are even more key features influencing and characterizing Web applications. As a consequence, new design techniques and methodologies are emerging to face these requirements, and new contexts of use are necessary to test these techniques and to provide empirical evidence confirming them. Based on this assumption, MEDINA (MEDiterranean INternet Access) Project wants to be a "case study" of such methodologies, aiming at developing a Web-based "application framework" with features such as those identified above - dedicated to a particular and specific context, the so called culture-oriented tourism.