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Alexander, M. (2003). Employee experience levels and the relation
to usability in a Web based information system. Paper presented
at ASIS&T IA Summit 2003 "Making Connections." Retrieved
June 17, 2003, from http://www.asist-events.org/IASummit2003/EEL.shtml
This study compares employees' perceived and practical usability
problems within a company's Web-based information system, based
on their levels of experience. The researchers found that expert
users generally completed the tasks in less time than novices,
while the number of tasks completed correctly and the number of
usability problems reported did not differ significantly by experience
level.
Allen, M. (2002). A case study of the usability testing
of the University of South Florida’s virtual library interface
design. Online Information Review, 26, 40-53.
This paper reports the usability testing at the University of
South Florida Libraries, including the preliminary activities,
testing methodologies, and results.
Arms, W. Y. (2000). Digital libraries. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press. Retrieved February 20, 2003, from http://www.cs.cornell.edu/way/DigLib.
A chapter in this book is about user interfaces and usability.
Although Arms focuses on user interfaces when he interprets usability,
he also states that usability should be considered from all components
of a digital library, including interface design, functional design,
data and metadata, and computer systems and networks.
Badre, A. N. (2002). Shaping Web usability: Interaction design
in context. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
This is a good book regarding Web usability. The chapters on
cultural usability, evaluation of Web usability, and Frequently
Asked Questions about Usability Evaluation are of particular interest.
Battleson, B., Booth, A., & Weintrop, J. (2001). Usability
testing of an academic library web site: A case study. The Journal
of Academic Librarianship, 27(3), 188-198.
This paper reports the conduct of usability testing at the University
of Buffalo Libraries. The goal of the study was to determine how
effectively the libraries’ Web site worked when used for
library research by undergraduates with little or no experience
using the site.
Bishop, A. P., & Bruce, B. C. (2002). Usability research
as participative inquiry. Proceedings of the JCDL Workshop on
Usability of Digital Libraries. Retrieved June 11, 2003, from
http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/annb/DLUsability/BishopBruce26.pdf
The authors find that framing usability research as a collaborative
"community inquiry" process helps in integrating the knowledge
and views of diverse participants in the development of digital
libraries.
Blandford, A., & Buchanan, G. (2002). Workshop report: Usability
of digital libraries @ JCDL '02. Retrieved June 13, 2003, from http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/annb/DLUsability/SIGIR.pdf
Ten papers were presented in this workshop. Issues raised at
the workshop included the definition of usability, the need to
improve techniques of assessing usability, the method of sampling,
and the identification of representative tasks.
Brinck, T., Gergle, D., & Wood, S. D. (2002). Designing
web sites that work: Usability for the web. San Francisco: Morgan
Kaufmann.
This is a good introduction book on what is usability, why is
usability important, and web usability problems. The book focuses
on how to design a good web site.
Buttenfield, B. (1999). Usability evaluation of digital libraries.
Science and Technology Libraries 17(3/4), 39-59.
This paper distinguishes usability evaluation procedures in a
physical library from those in a digital library. Specific techniques
of usability testing are described. The experience at Alexandria
Digital Library was discussed.
Campbell, N. (2001). Usability assessment of library-related
web sites: Methods and case studies. Chicago: American Library Association.
This is a method book about how to conduct a usability test.
The book gives a good introduction on the various usability testing
techniques including formal usability test, card sort, category
membership expectation, focus groups, questionnaires, analysis
of site usage logs, cognitive walkthrough, and heuristic evaluation.
The book includes case studies at Arizona State University, Auburn
University Libraries, Eastern Illinois University, Indiana University,
Kansas City Public Library, MIT, National Library of Medicine,
and University of Nevada.
Chen, P. R. (n.d.). User satisfaction of using Stanford's library
system: Socrates. Retrieved June 21, 2003, from http://hci.stanford.edu/cs377/schiano/SampleSurveyPilot.pdf
The author conducted a pilot study of four female graduate students,
aged 20 to 30, to study six usability attributes: controllability,
visibility, efficiency, helpfulness, learnability, and overall
satisfaction. Although the sample size is small, the author contributes
two new attributes to the dimension of usability, controllability
and visibility, which are seldom mentioned in other usability
literature.
Cockrell, B. J., & Jayne, E. A. (2002). How do I find an article?
Insights from a Web usability study. Journal of Academic Librarianship,
28(3), 122-132.
This paper reports a transforming experience of Western Michigan
University librarians after applying usability testing. The samples
included 10 faculty, 10 graduates, and 10 undergraduates. Like
many other studies, this paper reports the terminology issue of
the Library's Web site. To address this issue, hypertext links
were made more descriptive and readily distinguishable; specialized
terminology was simplified as much as possible; and a glossary
of library terms for the site is developed.
Covey, D. T. (2002). Usage and usability assessment: Library
practices and concerns. Retrieved June 5, 2003, from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub105/contents.html
This is a report of the methods that are being deployed at leading
digital libraries to assess the use and usability of their online
collections and services. The author conducted interviews with
library professionals in twenty-four Digital Library Federation
member libraries who are engaged in assessment. The report provides
detailed description on the strengths and weaknesses of each method,
including survey, focus group, user protocol, heuristic evaluation,
card-sorting tests, and transaction log software. The value of
this report goes beyond usability testing and can be used as a
good starting-point to learn various research methods.
Crowley, G. H., Leffel, R., Ramirez, D., Hart, J. L., &
Armstrong, T. S. (2002). User perceptions of the library’s
Web pages: A focus group study at Texas A&M University. Journal
of Academic Librarianship, 28(4), 205-210.
This paper reports the focus group study at the Texas A&M
University. Focus group is one way to begin to understand user’s
needs and should be followed by formal usability study for the
redesign of the Web pages.
Dickstein, R., & Mills, V. (2000). Usability testing
at the University of Arizona library: How to let the users in on
the design. Information Technology and Libraries, 19(3),
144-151.
The usability testing at the University of Arizona serves as
an excellent model for usability testing of University Libraries
Web site. The study found that the site was designed from librarian’s
perspective instead of from users. They also found that many standard
library terminology were meaningless to students.
Feldman, S. (1999). The key to online catalogs that work? Testing:
One, two, three. Computers in Libraries, 19, 16-20.
If you don't have time to read a book on usability testing, this
concise paper tells you everything you need to know about running
a usability test.
Fox, E. A., Hix, D., Nowell, L. T., Brueni, D. J., Wake, W.
C., Heath, L. S. et al. (1993). Users, user interfaces, and objects:
Envision, a digital library. Journal of the American Society
for Information Science, 44(8), 480-491.
This is an early publication that deals with usability testing
of digital libraries. The authors proposed nine principles for
constructing a digital library covering the areas of representation,
architecture, and user interface.
France, R. K., Nowell, L. T., Fox, E. A., Saad, R. A., &
Zhao, J. (1999). Use and usability in a digital library search system.
Retrieved March 20, 2003, from http://www.dlib.vt.edu/Papers/use-usability.PDF
This paper reports a user study, analysis of use patterns, and
formative usability evaluation of a digital library, MARIAN, at
Virginia Tech. The findings from the usability are useful to system
designers to better understand their users. As a result, the query
form was re-designed and the appearance of the MARIAN web pages
was thoroughly revised.
Hix, D., & Hartson, H. R. (1993). Developing user interfaces:
Ensuring usability through product & process. New York: John
Wiley.
This book discusses the two main components in an interface:
the product and the process.
It is the first book to emphasize process. It details a pragmatic
approach to the interface development process in a way that is
immediately useful to practitioners struggling to produce usable
interfaces.
Hovater, J., Krot, M., Kiskis, D. L., Holland, H., & Altman,
M. (2002). Usability testing of the Virtual Data Center. Paper presented
at the Usability workshop of JCDL 2002. Retrieved June 13, 2003,
from http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/annb/DLUsability/Hovater7.pdf
The paper reports a series of evaluation, including focus groups,
user surveys, cognitive walkthroughs, and formal usability tests
of the Virtual Data Center. Usability issues were identified including
lack of documentation, unfamiliar language, and inefficient search
functionality.
Jones, C., & Sumner, T. (2002). Evaluation of the National
Science Digital Library. Paper presented at the Usability workshop
of JCDL 2002. Retrieved June 13, 2003, from http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/annb/DLUsability/JonesSumner5.pdf
This article describes a pilot study of evaluating the National
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Digital Library.
The methods in the pilot include Web log usage analysis, collections
assessment techniques, survey instruments, and semi-structured
interviews.
Kantner, L., & Rosenbaum, S. (1997). Usability studies of
www sites: Heuristic evaluation vs. laboratory testing, 153-160.
Retrieved March 24, 2003, from ACM Digital Library database.
This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of two usability
assessment methods frequently applied to web sites: heuristic
evaluation and laboratory testing.
Kengeri, R., Seals, C. D., Harley, H. D., Reddy, H. P., & Fox,
E. A. (1999). Usability study of digital libraries: ACM, IEEE-CS,
NCSTRL, NDLTD. International Journal on Digital Libraries,
2, 157-169.
The study observed 48 subjects as they worked with ACM, IEEE-CS,
NCSTRL, and NDLTD. The subjects were classified into two user
groups: experienced and novice. Experienced users were those who
had previously used at least one of the digital libraries being
studied. There were 21 experienced and 27 novice participants.
The results were similar between the novices and the experienced
users.
Kim, K. (2002). A model of digital library information seeking
process (DLISP model) as a frame for classifying usability problems.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University.
The author proposes a Digital Library Information Seeking Process
(DLISP) model as a frame for classifying usability problems. It
is known that, in human-computer interaction and library and information
science communities, there have been few attempts to apply models
of stages of activities to classify usability problems of interactive
systems. This dissertation research came up with a new model that
helps to explain the information seeking process in a digital
library environment.
Lesk, M. (1997). Practical digital libraries: Books, bytes,
and bucks. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
One chapter in this book is devoted to usability and retrieval
evaluation. A practical digital library has to build systems everyone
can use. This chapter emphasizes the user and the considerations
in what needs to be done to make system effective, not just available.
Mangiaracina, S., & Marchetti, P. G. (1999, January). EINS-Web:
User interface evaluation in digital libraries. 0, 36. Retrieved
May 6, 2003, from http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw36/marchetti.html
The authors report a study conducted at the Library of the Italian
National Research Council, in Bologna. The criteria of usability
used were user satisfaction, ease of learning, ease of use, error
prevention, and efficiency of the interface. Heuristic evaluation
method was used. Two different sessions were conducted, one with
experts only and the other was a mixed group of experts and users.
The authors noticed that the pure expert group was able to detect
problems related to interactive behavior of the interface, such
as users' behavior problems, conceptual user model, and aesthetic
design. The group with a mix of experts and users was more able
to examine concrete, real-world information seeking interaction
problems. They also discovered that experts want to increase interface
functionality to achieve their goals while users want to reduce
interface functionality in favor of intuitive and simple features.
Marchionini, G., & Geisler, G. (2002, December). The Open
video digital library. D-Lib Magazine, 8(12). Retrieved March
3, 2003, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december02/marchionini/12marchionini.html
This paper describes the project of OVDL. The goal of the project
is the creation and evaluation of highly interactive user interfaces
that allow people to select representations and control them quickly
and easily to achieve their information-seeking needs.
McGillis, L., & Toms, E. G. (2001). Usability of the
academic library web site: Implications for design. College &
Research Libraries, 62(4), 355-367.
McGillis and Toms report the usability testing at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland Libraries. On average, participants
completed seventy-five percent of the tasks, taking about two
minutes per task, and, in general, were satisfied with the site’s
clarity and organization and their ability to do the tasks.
McMullen, S. (2001b). Usability testing in a library web
site redesign project. Reference Services Review, 29, 7-22.
McMullen reports the usability testing at Roger Williams University.
The study uncovered problems related to unclear terminology, proper
use of color, size, and location for navigational links, and the
need for context sensitive help, built-in redundancy, and clear
and consistent navigation.
National Cancer Institute. Usability Basics. Retrieved June
3, 2003, from http://www.usability.gov
This site provides basics of usability, including its definition
and how to conduct a usability testing. It also provides many
useful links to other resources.
Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability engineering. San Diego: Morgan
Kaufmann.
This is a must-read for usability testing. Nielsen discusses
the attributes of usability, the usability engineering lifecycle,
usability heuristics, and the methods of conducting a usability
testing. This book provides solid advices on how to conduct usability
testing and is the one cited the most in the literature.
Norlin, E., & Winters, C. (2002). Usability testing for
library web sites: A hands-on guide. Chicago: American Library Association.
This small book provides all essentials to get your web site
usability testing project started.
Park, S. (2000). Usability, user preferences, effectiveness,
and user behaviors when searching individual and integrated full-text
databases: Implications for digital libraries. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science, 51(5), 456-468.
This article addresses the issue of how to support effective
interaction of users with heterogeneous and distributed information
resources. Twenty-eight students from the graduate school of Communication,
Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers University were recruited
for the study. The finding was that more subjects preferred the
common interface to the integrated interface, mainly because they
could have more control over database selection. This suggests
that the general assumption of the information retrieval literature
that an integrated interaction is best needs to be revisited.
Prown, S. (1999). Detecting 'broke': Usability testing of library
Web sites. Retrieved June 21, 2003, from http://www.library.yale.edu/~prowns/nebic/nebictalk.html
This Web site provides the background information and method
used at conducting usability testing at Stanford University Library
Web site. No real data is given on this site, but the method of
analyzing the data is there.
Rubin, J. (1994). Handbook of usability testing: How to plan,
design, and conduct effective tests. New York: Wiley.
This book provides a straightforward, step-by-step approach for
evaluating and improving the usability of computer-based products,
systems, and accompanying support materials. It is a "how-to"
book, filled with practical guidelines, realistic examples, and
many samples of test materials.
Shneiderman, B. (1992). Designing the user interface: Strategies
for effective human-computer interaction. (2nd ed.). Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Chapter 13 (pp. 478-481) talks briefly about how to conduct usability
test, including consent forms, pilot test, and videotaping.
Spool, J. M., Scanlon, T., Snyder, C., Schroeder, W., &
DeAngelo, T. (1999). Web site usability: A designer's guide. San
Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Spool et al. examined usability issues from the perspectives
of graphics, content, and navigation. They found that the quality
of graphic design seems to have little impact on users' ability
to find and process information. The authors studied nine popular
web sites including Cnet, Disney, Edmund's, Fidelity, Hewlett
Packard, Inc., Olympics, Travelocity, and WebSaver.
Sumner, T., & Dawe, M. (2001). Looking at digital library
usability from a reuse perspective. Proceedings of the First
ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 416-425.
Retrieved September 8, 2003 from ACM Digital Library database.
The authors applied task centered design and analysis to evaluate
usability of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE).
One finding is that resource reuse occurs at different stages
in the educational design process, and each stage imposes different
and possibly conflicting requirements on digital library design.
Another finding is that reuse is a distributed process across
several artifacts, both within and outside of the library itself.
In order for reuse to be successful, a usability line cannot be
drawn at the library boundary, but instead must encompass both
the library system and the educational resources themselves.
Theng, Y. L., Mohd-Nasir, N., & Thimbleby, H. (2000). Purpose
and usability of digital libraries. Proceedings of the Fifth
ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, 238-239. Retrieved February
4, 2003, from ACM Digital Library database.
The purpose of this study was to help understand the purpose
of digital libraries and to investigate whether meaningful results
could be obtained from small user studies of digital libraries.
The research incorporates questionnaires and heuristics evaluation,
and employs real users. The 45 subjects were split randomly into
3 groups of 15 subjects that evaluated one digital library each.
Three digital libraries were chosen: the ACM igital Library, the
Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library, and the
New Zealand Digital Library.
Turner, S. (2002). The HEP test for grading Web site usability.
Computers in Libraries, 22(10), 37-39.
Turner proposes a checklist to evaluate usability. The categories
include navigation, page design, content, accessibility, media
use, interactivity, and consistency.
Vrana, R. (2003). Library Web site usability: What, why, and
how? Retrieved June 28, 2003 from http://jagor.srce.hr/~rvrana/lida2003/abstract.htm
Vrana discusses why usability is important, what usability is,
and provides a clear checklist to examine usability. The areas
include navigation, page design, content, accessibility, media
use, interactivity, and consistency.
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