USABILITY STUDY

Usability Study of Rebecca Crown Librarys Website

From a Guest User Perspective

Emma Norris

LIS 753 - Summer 2016

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I. OUTLINE OF TEST

This study is focused on guest user perspectives of the Rebecca Crown Library

website. Many community members visit Crown Library and utilize its resources as

guest users. As such, Crown Library should be aware of how their website is perceived

by individuals not affiliated with Dominican University. Students of the University are

exposed to Crown Librarys website through instruction sessions, whereas guest users

have little to no knowledge of the librarys website. By examining the usability of the

librarys website through a guest perspective, Crown Library can make adjustments to

better meet the information needs of community users.

Figure 1. Screenshot of Rebecca Crown Librarys Webpage (http://dom.edu/library)

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II. PRELIMINARY REVIEW

Jakob Nielsen developed a list of 10 usability heuristics that will be used to preliminary

assess Crown Librarys website.

A. Visibility of system status. The main page of the website has a column for

library announcements. These announcements communicate important

information to library users and are updated on a regular basis.

B. Match between system and the real world. While many words and phrases

are potentially familiar to the audience, some library jargon is present and

may cause confusion to users. For example: ILLiad, I-Share, WorldCat

Local, etc. Some users may be intimidated by terms they do not

recognize.

C. User control and freedom. Users can use forward and backward functions

within their browser to correct a navigational misstep. Additionally, the

sidebar expands to show webpages within a particular topic. Expanding

sidebars likely prevent navigational errors because users will have a better

sense of where theyre going before they click.

D. Consistency and standards. Pages are typically consistent with each other

in terms of layout and design. However, some pages are LibGuides, which

introduces another layer of navigational schemes to the site. This can be

good or bad depending on the user.

E. Error prevention. As mentioned previously, the expanding sidebar likely

prevents errors during navigation. However, the organization of the search

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bar is prone to errors. In fact, people might not even realize theyre making

an error and assume that their search simply didnt yield any results.

F. Recognition rather than recall. The site could use improvement in this

area. Many reference questions at the help desk pertain to accessing

resources when the individual has forgotten how they previously accessed

it.

G. Flexibility and efficiency of use. The user must be very familiar with the

site before he/she can use it efficiently. The search function could be

improved in this category.

H. Aesthetic and minimalist design. The websites design is cohesive with the

rest of the Universitys website. However, many aspects of the design

could be improved upon. For example, the website has a cluttered

appearance and deceiving design (i.e. fonts that make text appear as links

when no links are present).

I. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Unfortunately

Im unfamiliar with how this website handles errors so I cannot offer an

assessment in this category.

J. Help and documentation. A chat window appears on each screen so users

can request help from any page of the website. Additionally, the search

function offers a search history so users can document the searches they

perform.

Overall, this website has many useful features and a thoughtful layout, however, not all

users are aware of these features because they are cluttered with extra stuff. New
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users to the site, such as community guests, will likely be overwhelmed and confused

by all the site has to offer.

III. SCRIPT FOR USER TEST

Introduction (Introduce self to participant)

I asked you here today to participate in a usability study for a website.

The session should take about 20 minutes. In this session, I will ask

you to perform various tasks using the website. Please talk through

your thought process as you perform each task. At the end, I will ask

you questions about your overall thoughts on the website. Remember

that this study is testing the site, not you - so no need to worry about

making mistakes.

I will be taking notes throughout the session. Do you have any

questions before we begin?

Participant Lets begin with some profile information.

Profile Please identify your name & occupation.

Approximately how many hours per week do you use the

Internet?

What do you use the Internet for?

Task #1 (Starting at Dominican University homepage)

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Now lets begin with our first task. Please navigate to the library

website from Dominican Universitys homepage.

Task #2 Now I will ask you to find more about the librarys operating hours.

What time does the library close today? What are the hours for next

semester?

Task #3 You are not a student at the university - can you use the computers at

the library?

Task #4 You came to the library to use a database to get more information

about a recent diagnosis. Please navigate to the Health Source

database.

Task #5 Where could you go/what could you do to find additional help at the

library?

Follow-up What features of the website were confusing to you, if any?

Questions What is your impression about navigating the site?

What should be added to the site?

What do you like best about the site?

What do you like least about the site?

Do you think some people would have problems using this site? Why?

Any last comments?

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IV. RESULTS

The above usability script was repeated with two participants. Participant A is an

internet-savvy college student (not at Dominican University) and Participant B is a not-

so-savvy middle-aged individual. Both users reported their estimated Internet usage at

25-30 hours per week. Most of their Internet usage focuses on social media, banking,

email, and entertainment.

The first task involved navigating to the library website from the Dominican

University homepage. The rationale behind this task is that guest users are not familiar

with the library URL and would likely begin to investigate the library from Dominicans

main webpage. Both participants struggled to navigate to the librarys homepage. One

participant tried searching library in the search box at the top of the page but the

results were not immediately clear - but that is another issue altogether. It took several

minutes for each participant to navigate to the library page, which is not an efficient

start. Users who cannot find the page will likely be frustrated and overwhelmed by the

time they reach the library site.

The second task asked users to identify the librarys hours. Both users quickly

spotted the current hours on the librarys homepage, but struggled to find the hours for

the upcoming semester despite the link being directly below the current hours. Once

participants found the link to the upcoming hours, they found it difficult to decipher the

list of hours. They reported that it was confusing and visually messy. Participant A was

particularly frustrated that the font looked clickable but was not in fact a link.

Task three asked participants to learn about using the library as a guest user. In

my own error, I coached the participants by using the term guest user. Both
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participants remarked that they wouldnt have known to look at the guest user tab if I

hadnt used that term.

The results of task four were slightly worrying. The task involved navigating to a

database called Health Source. Participant A got lost in the collections tab and the

research help tab, but eventually found the database tab. Once he reached the

database tab, he had no problems navigating to the database itself - possibly because

of his experience using databases at his own college library. Participant B was confused

by the term database and we paused the study so I could explain library databases.

The participant reported that she had no idea that libraries offered this service (so we

detoured to look up databases available to her through her local public library). It took

several attempts for Participant A to locate the databases on the library page - she was

confused by the search tabs for different types of resources - especially the fact that the

search defaults to Academic Search Complete. Ultimately, we had to work through this

task together.

The fifth and final task was more promising. Task five asked the participants

where/how they could get additional help. Both participants immediately pointed out the

chat feature - one participant even tried it! They both reported that they appreciated

that immediate help was available to them.

The responses to the follow-up questions were generally positive but brought up

a few usability issues. Their favorite parts of the website include the color scheme and

contrast of the text, making the website visually appealing and easy to read. They also

responded positively to the sidebars and roll-down menus. However, they reported that

the search functions were confusing and it was easy to get lost. Abundant information
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cluttered the screen and made it more difficult to quickly scan for information. Overall,

they described the website as average - not the best website theyre ever used, but

theyve certainly experienced worse.

V. SUGGESTIONS

The above tasks identified several weaknesses of the librarys website. First, the

website should be made easily accessible from the Dominican University homepage.

Including a link to the library in the quick links section would be the most ideal solution.

This way, guest users could quickly find information about using Dominicans library.

Second, the information should be simplified to reduce visual clutter. For example, the

page for library hours could be streamlined into an easy-to-read chart that is less

confusing to users. The font should also be adjusted to better distinguish headers, text,

and links. Third, adjusting the terminology may make the website more digestible for all

library users - not just guest users. In this instance, guest users was not an intuitive

term for the participants. Perhaps other terminology could be used to identify community

guests. The fourth and most important usability issue was the database debacle. Not

only were users unfamiliar with the term database, they were confused by the

websites attempt to organize the search functions by resource. Streamlining and

simplifying the search function would greatly improve usability - not only from a guest

perspective - but overall. In particular, users should be made aware that the database

search defaults to Academic Search Complete. Additionally, the ability to browse

databases should be made more intuitive, perhaps by re-labeling the Select a

Database button to Databases A-Z.

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Although Rebecca Crown Librarys main focus is serving its students, they must

also take into account that community members frequently visit their library. These

guests may be overwhelmed and confused by the current website. By making the above

changes, the website becomes more user-friendly to all users, not just guests.

WORKS CITED

Nielsen, Jakob. (1995). 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. Retrieved

from: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/