Effects of interaction design in digital libraries on user interactions

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This study aims to investigate the effects of different search and browse features in digital libraries (DLs) on task interactions, and what features would lead to poor user experience. Design/methodology/approach -Three operational DLs: ACM, IEEE CS, and IEEE Xplore are used in this study. These three DLs present different features in their search and browsing designs. Two information-seeking tasks are constructed: one search task and one browsing task. An experiment was conducted in a usability laboratory. Data from 35 participants are collected on a set of measures for user interactions. Findings -The results demonstrate significant differences in many aspects of the user interactions between the three DLs. For both search and browse designs, the features that lead to poor user interactions are identified. Research limitations/implications -User interactions are affected by specific design features in DLs. Some of the design features may lead to poor user performance and should be improved. The study was limited mainly in the variety and the number of tasks used. Originality/value -The study provided empirical evidence to the effects of interaction design features in DLs on user interactions and performance. The results contribute to our knowledge about DL designs in general and about the three operational DLs in particular.

The impact of presentation vs. interaction design on user satisfaction with digital libraries

“…Besides the interface, a system's performance could be a significant determinant of the user's satisfaction with the system. In order to get an idea of their possible impact, we firstly looked at search and browse performance (this part of data was also reported in Zhang et al, 2008). As shown in Table 1, for search function, the three DLs had similar performance measured by precision.…”

Community‐driven user evaluation of the Inuvialuit cultural heritage digital library

“…In a review of literature on digital library user interface evaluation studies, Hariri and Norouzi (2011), propose a set of evaluation criteria based on widely and frequently used measures in previous research, some of which include navigation, search, design, interaction, learnability, ease of use, presentation, consistency, user experience, flexibility and accessibility. Zhang, Li, Liu, and Zhang (2008) note that searching and browsing are among the major interaction styles in digital libraries. Research on the usability evaluation of bilingual and multilingual cultural heritage digital library user interfaces suggests that they should be designed in such way as to allow users to easily view and form a coherent perspective of the collection and provide searching and browsing functions as well as high level facets to facilitate exploration and navigation (Shiri et al, 2011;Shiri, Ruecker, Bouchard, Doll, & Fiorentino, 2013).…”

A Community-Driven Usability Evaluation: The Case of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region Digital Library

“…They found that a number of criteria have been widely and frequently used in previous research, some of which include navigation, search, design, interaction, learnability, ease of use, presentation, consistency, user experience, flexibility and accessibility. Zhang et al (2008) note that searching and browsing are among the major interaction styles in digital libraries. Drawing upon the literature of digital library interface design and usability, Xie and Matuziak (2016) emphasize that "usability testing is a critical component of user-centered design and an approach for improving user interface."…”