Web Usability: What Is It &

Why Should I Care?

Stephanie Willen Brown Librarian @ UConn

Adjunct professor @ Simmons GSLIS

browns@simmons.edu IM: CogSciLibrarian

Paul Marty:

“… only a small amount of time is necessary to demonstrate … that the best way to evaluate an interface for usability is to test that interface with representative users.”

Marty, Paul + Michael Twidale, “Usability@90mph” FirstMonday, 2005

Act Like a User: Find Information about Diabetes

Two questions• What’s the first thing you see?• Where can you get information on

diabetes?– Site 1– Site 2

http://denverlibrary.org

http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/

Today’s Agenda

• Lecture: – UX– Usability

• Live Usability Lab– iCONN federated search

• UConn’s usability test– Assessment – Test– Results

Why Should We Care About UX?

“Your web site is the embodiment of your library ... For customers to feel they have a good relationship with your library, they must first feel they have a good relationship with the web site — and that begins with the user experience.”

Paraphrased from Garrett, J.J. “Customer Loyalty and the Elements of User Experience”

The Elements of User Experience

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

Components of Good Design

•Learnability•Efficiency•Memorability•Error recovery•Satisfaction

Satisfaction?

Shneiderman, “Designing for Fun”

Satisfaction –> Fun

Shneiderman, “Designing for Fun”

How to Achieve Good Design

• Think like a user

• Consistent design

• Tweak text

Thinking Like a User

“… let’s 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

ConsistencyConsistency

Color, graphicsColor, graphics

Orientation & Orientation & navigationnavigation

LanguageLanguage

Reading Online is Like ??

Reading Proust – Read long sentences online because it’s

easy to keep your place, follow complex trains of thought, and flip to the next screen of dense text

orSkimming citations

– Skim titles & abstracts for keywords, take notes, and move to the next citation

Reading Online: ProustFor 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.

Swann’s Way / Marcel Proust

Skimming Citations

ERIC search: African Americans and mathematics

Jargon to Library Users

• “ERIC, I think it’s some kind of journal … some kind of citation.”

• Reference Shelf “[It’s] very general. You don’t know what to expect as it could be anything.”

Jargon for Librarians

• On travelocity, you need the cheapest round-trip ticket from Boston to London.

• These are your options – which is right?

1) Flights & Prices2) Fares3) 3 Best Itineraries

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

Facilitator

Participant @ computer

Note-taker 2

Note-taker 1

How We Will Test

Volunteer Required

• Someone who hasn’t used Student Research Center?

• Willing to use site to answer “typical” questions in front of your classmates?!

• Leave the room for ~5 minutes• I will

– Describe Student Research Center– Review the test questions

Read to the “Tester”

@ Student Research Center

Redesigning UConn’s Database Locator

Redesign Goals

• Web & database usage statistics greatly outweigh individual library-user contact

• UConn Libraries “Plan 2010” Goal 2: Scholar’s Portal says:– “Provide immediate, unmediated, and

comprehensive access to digitized research and scholarly collections worldwide.”

• Peter Morville: “Make Things Findable”

Redesign Timeline

• Began Winter 2006: “database descriptions too long, fix”– All agreed. But …– Rewriting database descriptions wouldn’t

solve all problems.– “Maybe we should do more”

• Ad hoc group started meeting spring 2006 & set up plan

• Rolled out final version spring 2007

Usage Log Analysis

March - May 2006, UConn patrons …– Performed a keyword

search 15,800 times; and

– Clicked on Databases by Title 6,600 times;

– Used the subject browse 18,000 times.

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 doesn’t the us have a

eurpean-style welfate state?”

Usability Testing: 3 Rounds• Who?

– 3 undergraduates, 1 grad, 1 faculty in each– @ Storrs & regional campuses

• What?– First tested old system– Major redesign– Tested redesign– Tweaked design– Tested again

Usability Tasks

• Find articles about the housing market• Find articles about diabetes for your

nursing class• Your professor said “use a database

named ERIC”

… plus 7 more …

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

housing market

Search “housing market”

Browse by Topic Business

Find a Database Named ERIC

Diabetes Article, I

diabetes

Diabetes Article, II

http://rdl.lib.uconn.edu/bySubject.php

Best Bets in Library Science

Bonus: Displaying License Data

Tech Notes

• RDL is public view of data elements from “home-grown” electronic resource management system (ERM)

• ERM written in– PHP– MySQL – Some javascript

Ajax

Final Round of Testing