Design guidelines of a web portal's functions and layouts to fit individual user's personality traits

Abstract

The study is aimed to design characteristics of a web portal by using functions and an effective layout and to develop guidelines of building the web portal to fit an individual user's personality traits. This study is a part of a comprehensive research project that focuses on designing the position of different elements on a web page that caters toward personality traits of individual users. The study primarily uses the rule of thirds which is an essential photography technique applicable to any subject to emphasise the composition and balance of images. Under this rule, the upper left-hand corner is the point that is more pleasing to the eyes, followed by the lower left-hand corner, the upper right-hand corner and the lower right-hand corner, respectively. Questionnaires addressing the patterns of individual users' need for a web portal's elements such as data readings, web application settings and function characteristics which fit users' personalities were used in this study. The five-factor personality trait is the key theory used to design the questionnaires.