Analytical usability evaluation for digital libraries

Blandford, Ann; Keith, Suzette; Connell, Iain; Edwards, Helen M.

doi:10.1145/996350.996360

Cited by 65 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…It is the most widely used UEM for computer system interfaces. It is described as fast, inexpensive, and easy to perform, and can result in major improvements to user interfaces [4,5,19,24]. HE is often done during development, but can be very effective when used on real, operational systems [26,31] as in this study, so as to compare the results of evaluation by two different methods on exactly the same application.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparative study of two usability evaluation methods using a web-based e-learning application

Ssemugabi

Villiers

2007

Proceedings of the 2007 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Techno

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Usability evaluation of e-learning applications is a maturing area, which addresses interfaces, usability and interaction from human-computer interaction (HCI) and pedagogy and learning from education. The selection of usability evaluation methods (UEMs) to determine usability problems is influenced by time, cost, efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of application. Heuristic evaluation (HE) involves evaluation by experts with expertise in the domain area and/or HCI. This comparative evaluation study investigates the extent to which HE identifies usability problems in a web-based learning application and compares the results with those of survey evaluations among end-users (learners). Severity rating was conducted on a consolidated set of usability problems and further comparison of findings was done on the major and minor problems. The results of HE correspond closely with those of the survey. However the four expert evaluators identified more problems than the 61 learners and identified 91% of the learners' problems, when major problems only were considered. HE by a competent and balanced set of experts showed itself to be an appropriate, efficient and effective UEM for e-learning applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparative study of two usability evaluation methods using a web-based e-learning application

Ssemugabi

Villiers

2007

Proceedings of the 2007 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Techno

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“…• Some other techniques that we had tested, including Cognitive Walkthrough (CW: Wharton et al, 1994) and Heuristic Evaluation (Nielsen, 1994), gave useful insights about superficial aspects of design, such as the suitability of labels and the quality of feedback, but did not give leverage on deeper usability issues concerning information seeking (Blandford et al, 2004). Scenarios and Claims offered the promise of addressing these deeper issues.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupting digital library development with scenario informed design

Blandford

Keith

Butterworth

et al. 2007

Interacting with Computers

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In recent years, there has been great interest in scenario-based design and other forms of user-centred design. However, there are many design processes that, often for good reason, remain technology-centred. We present a case study of introducing scenarios into two digital library development processes. This was found to disrupt established patterns of working and to bring together conflicting value systems. In particular, the human factors approach of identifying users and anticipating what they are likely to do with a system (and what problems they might encounter) did not sit well with a development culture in which the rapid generation and informal evaluation of possible solutions (that are technically feasible and compatible with stable system components) is the norm. We found that developers tended to think in terms of two kinds of user: one who was exploring the system with no particular goal in mind and one who knew as much as the developer; scenarios typically work with richer user descriptions that challenge that thinking. In addition, the development practice of breaking down the design problem into discrete functions to make it manageable does not fit well with a scenario-based approach to thinking about user behaviour and interactions. The compromise reached was scenario-informed design, whereby scenarios were generated to support reasoning about the use of selected functions within the system. These scenarios helped create productive common ground between perspectives.

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“…These scenarios were developed by eliciting user requirements through literature analysis (focussing on DL user requirements), claims analysis [4] (addressing DL users and librarians), and a questionnaire [18] send to a DL mailing list (reaching mainly developers, also users and administrators). Our user study for alerting is the first one that addresses a wide range of groups that interact with, and are affected by, digital libraries.…”

Section: User Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

A generic alerting service for digital libraries

Buchanan

Hinze

2005

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

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Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. Proprietary and mediating alerting services fail to fluidly integrate information from differing collections. So far, no sophisticated service has been proposed that is integrated with the digital library software and covers heterogeneous and distributed collections. This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the differing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service. Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services for digital libraries, their design and use is greater than one may anticipate. We also show that, conversely, the requirements for an alerting service have considerable impact on the concepts of DL design. Our findings should be of interest for librarians as well as system designers. We highlight and discuss the far-reaching implications for the design of, and interaction with, libraries. This paper discusses the lessons learned from building such a distributed alerting service. We present our prototype implementation as a proof-of-concept for an alerting service for open DL software.

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Analytical usability evaluation for digital libraries

Cited by 65 publications

References 22 publications

A comparative study of two usability evaluation methods using a web-based e-learning application

A comparative study of two usability evaluation methods using a web-based e-learning application

Disrupting digital library development with scenario informed design

A generic alerting service for digital libraries

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