Usability Testing a Public ERM: Worth the Effort

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Usability Testing a Public ERM Worth the Effort?

• Stephanie Willen Brown
• Electronic Resource Librarian
• University of Connecticut
• January 8, 2008

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Act Like a User

• You need information on diabetes for a paper.
• Two questions
• Whats the first thing you see?
• Where can get material for your paper?
• Site 1
• Site 2
• Site 3

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Community College of Philadelphia http//www.ccp.e
du/vpacaff/library/
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Salt Lake Community College http//libweb.slcc.edu
/index/library-resources
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York County (ME) Community College http//ww.yccc.
edu/library/library.asp
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What is Usability?

• Usability assesses how easy user interfaces
  are to use. The word usability also refers to
  methods for improving ease-of-use during the
  design process.
• Jakob Nielsen, Usability 101

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Making Things Findable

• UConn Libraries Plan 2010 Goal 2 Scholars
  Portal says
• Provide immediate, unmediated, and comprehensive
  access to digitized research and scholarly
  collections worldwide.
• Web database usage statistics greatly outweigh
  individual library-user contact

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Components of Usability

• Goals
• Learnability
• Efficiency
• Memorability
• Error recovery
• Satisfaction

• Achieved by
• Thinking like a user
• Consistency
• Tweaking text

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Thinking Like a User

• lets acknowledge the vital importance
  of empathy for the user. Only by understanding
  and caring about the perspective of the
  individual can we design useful, usable
  solutions.
• - Peter Morville, Ambient Findability

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Consistency

• Color, graphics
• Orientation navigation
• Language

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Reading Online is Like

• Reading Proust
• People like to read long sentences online because
  its easy to keep your place, follow complex
  trains of thought, and flip to the next screen of
  dense text.
• or
• Skimming citations
• People skim titles abstracts for keywords, take
  notes, and move to the next citation

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Reading Online Proust

• For a long time I used to go to bed early.
  Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes
  would close so quickly that I had not even time
  to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour
  later the thought that it was time to go to sleep
  would awaken me I would try to put away the
  book which, I imagined, was still in my hands,
  and to blow out the light I had been thinking
  all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had
  just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a
  channel of their own, until I myself seemed
  actually to have become the subject of my book a
  church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francois I
  and Charles V. This impression would persist for
  some moments after I was awake it did not
  disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my
  eyes and prevented them from registering the fact
  that the candle was no longer burning. Then it
  would begin to seem unintelligible, as the
  thoughts of a former existence must be to a
  reincarnate spirit the subject of my book would
  separate itself from me, leaving me free to
  choose whether I would form part of it or no and
  at the same time my sight would return and I
  would be astonished to find myself in a state of
  darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the
  eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to
  which it appeared incomprehensible, without a
  cause, a matter dark indeed.

Swanns Way / Marcel Proust
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Skimming Citations Online
ERIC search African Americans mathematics
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Which is Easiest to Understand?
Type Books Journals Reports Videos Web
Sites Sciences Biology Chemistry
Microbiology Physics Zoology
Biology Books Chemistry Journals Microbiology Phys
ics Reports Videos Web Sites Zoology
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Arguably

• Why?
• Content arranged logically, with clear headings
  bullets
• Alphabetical within groups
• Content goes down, as it does in traditional
  print
• Words are chunked into pieces easy for eye to
  scan in one glance

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Jargon for Librarians

• On travelocity, you need the cheapest round-trip
  fare from Boston to London.
• These are your options which is right?

• Flights Prices
• Fares
• Three Best Itineraries

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Library Jargon to Students

• ERIC, I think its some kind of journal some
  kind of citation.
• Reference Shelf Its very general. You dont
  know what to expect as it could be anything.

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Usability Testing

• Define users
• Design questions to mimic what users would
  realistically do
• Do usability testing early often
• 3-5 users highlights 85 of errors
• Better to test several small groups than 10-15 at
  once
• Note errors, redesign and retest

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Redesigning the Research Database Locator

• External
• Literature review
• Find sites we liked
• Internal
• Usage query log analysis
• Usability testing
• Design ?
• testing ?
• redesign ?
• more testing

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Literature Review

• Cobus, Laura, Frances D. Valeda, and Anita
  Ondrusek. How Twenty-Eight Users Helped Redesign
  an Academic Library Web Site. Information
  Technology Libraries 44.3 (2005) 232-46.
• Krug, Steve. Dont Make Me Think! 2d ed,
  Indianapolis, Ind. Que. 2006.
• Nielsen, Jakob. Usability 101. Alertbox
  Current Issues in Web Usability.

http//gslis.simmons.edu/mw/browns/Usability
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Sites We Liked

• University of Torontos Best research resources
  for your topic. Shows article databases,
  research guides, and encyclopedias / dictionaries
  / handbooks.
• NCSUs Browse Subjects See Poultry Science
  e.g., and note tabs at the top for Summary, Books
  More Databases Articles Journals Reference
  Tools. Full subject list at left, with
  Agriculture expanded on Poultry Science page.
• Purdues All Databases by Subject Select main
  subjects from menu to see subcategories.

http//gslis.simmons.edu/mw/browns/Usability/Sites
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Usage Log Analysis

• March - May 2006, UConn patrons
• Used the subject browse 18,000 times
• Performed a keyword search 15,800 times and
• Clicked on Databases by Title 6,600 times.

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Query Log Analysis

• Database searches
• america history and life
• lexus nexus
• infotrack
• Subject searches
• education
• pharmacy medicine
• anthropologyu
• Topic searches
• hamlet insane
• adopted children of same sex couples
• why doesnt the us have a eurpean-style welfate
  state?

Are these successful?
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housing market

• Subject browse 18,000
• Keyword search 15,800 and
• Databases by Title 6,600

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Search housing market
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Browse by Topic ? Business
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Usability Testing 3 Rounds

• Who?
• 3 undergraduates, 1 grad, 1 faculty in each
• _at_ Storrs regional campuses
• What?
• First tested old system
• Major redesign
• Tested redesign
• Tweaked design
• Tested again

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Usability Tasks

• Find articles about diabetes for your nursing
  class
• Find a newspaper article on the day you were born
• Your professor said use a database named ERIC
• plus 7 more

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Databases by Title find ERIC
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Design Goals

• Unmediated use of database locator
• Focus on how most users think not librarians
  
• Display 5 databases per subject
• Users can choose to see more
• Shortened database descriptions

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http//rdl.lib.uconn.edu/bySubject.php
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Best Bets in Library Science
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Side Effect License Data
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All Databases in LIS
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Shortened Descriptions

• From this
• ABI/Inform Global Full-text articles from 1800
  journals covering business, finance, management
  and related functional areas. ABI/INFORM Global
  indexes a total of 2700 major publications.
  Subject coverage includes business and
  management, including all functional areas.
• To this
• ABI/Inform Global Articles in business, finance,
  management, accounting, advertising, banking,
  insurance, marketing, public administration, real
  estate, and telecommunications. 1991-current
  (full-text) 1971-current (index abstracts).

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Timeline How Long?!

• Began Winter 2006 database descriptions too
  long, fix
• All agreed. But
• Rewriting database descriptions wouldnt solve
  all problems.
• Maybe we should do more
• Ad hoc group started meeting spring 2006 set up
  plan

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From Ad Hoc to Rollout

• August 2006 first usability tests
• Fall 2006 redesign discussion
• Possible quick wins tested rejected
• November 2006 2d round of usability
• Redesign more discussion
• January 2007 (early) 3d round of usability
  tests
• January 2007 (mid) beta rollout
• March 2007 rollout (spring break)

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Final Round of Testing
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UConns Next Steps

• Continue user analysis
• Review query logs, usage data
• Solicit feedback from users, colleagues
• Add / tweak
• User tags
• My Databases feature
• Better searching?
• Note errors, redesign and retest

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UConn Redesign Team

• Stephanie Willen Brown, electronic resource
  librarian liaison to Communication Sciences
• Susanna Cowan, undergraduate education outreach
  librarian
• Kate Fuller, reference collection maintenance
  coordinator and / administrative assistant
• Jill Livingston, reference librarian/liaison to
  the school of allied health
• Tom Wood, applications developer

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Useful Usability Resources
http//gslis.simmons.edu/mw/browns/Usability
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PERM FAQ
http//gslis.simmons.edu/mw/browns/Usability/UConn
-FAQ
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Usability Testing Worth the Effort!
Tony Dungy Coach of the Indianapolis Colts Upon
winning 2007 Superbowl