City usability: a proposal for evaluating the perceived usability of a city on the basis of the website quality models

The assumption at the basis of this work is that people are an essential part of the city and that its different elements are adapted to the desires of citizens who live in. In order to do that it is important to apply adequate methodologies and tools that help to identify the user needs and to design solutions with people. In this paper we propose to apply the concept of “usability”, borrowed from the Human-Computer Interaction field, to the city environment in order to adopt a user perspective about the interaction with a specific territory. So, we identify the equivalences between the main features of the website quality models and those present at the city level, through a usability framework composed by a series of elements to consider for trying to create a human-centered city.