Search functionality is a fairly fundamental element of each of the JISC LMS projects so it would be foolhardy of me to try and document every single blogpost. The blogposts I've linked to below give a good representation of the sorts of issues and challenges that the projects have been tackling.
One of the things that often comes up as soon as you get anywhere near a library search interface is the thorny issue of 'advanced search'. I am starting to wonder whether it is only librarians themselves who can truly love this feature. It would be interesting to look at usage stats to see whether advanced searches get as much usage as library staff think they do/should do [and also whether that usage is changing over time].
Making a user friendly 'advanced search' interface is a particularly thorny challenge. During inhouse training sessions the #SWWHEPSRCH project team got feedback that the iFind advanced search was 'a little confusing'. The #BFCESEARCH team also reported that few users chose to use the advanced search function, and those who did 'found the option boxes confusing'.
When the #BLATHULL project analysed the results of their usability testing they found that opinions were divided on the usefulness of a) a tag cloud and b) a display of 'recently added' bookcovers(they were comparing SearchWorks at Stanford University and VirgoBeta at the University of Virginia). If the users are divided in their feedback then this makes getting the interface right all the more difficult.
Of course, implementing a new search often uncovers all sorts of data conundrums:
- http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/progress-report-search-interface/
- http://blacklightathull.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/union-search-and-revised-categories/
The UX2.0 project crafted some indepth technical guides to share how they're implementing faceted search, Apache Solr and Dublin Core Metadata:
- Part 1
- Part 2
The #AQUABROWSERUX project also shared their know how around how you can develop realistic user tests when looking at search functionality.
The #ENCLAVELMS team have written a relevant blogposts on whether wordclouds are the future of search and also their thoughts on what library search functionality could be usefully embedded within their VLE.
Lastly, just to mix things up a bit, here are a couple of high profile and large-scale beta search interfaces that may be of interest:
- http://library.wales.org/catcymru/
- British Library search beta
Showing posts with label ux2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ux2. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Monday, 13 December 2010
Theme Focus: Usability [part 3]
This is the final part of my theme focus on usability and it's a treasure trove of blogposts and reports which have been written by the good folks at the University of Edinburgh. There are officially two Edinburgh Uni projects within the JISC LMS programme {#AQUABROWSERUX and #ENCLAVELMS} but they are also running the #UX2 project so I've included things of interest from that project too.
It's a bit hard to know how to structure this post so that it doesn't get a tad confusing but here goes ...
This blogpost gives an overview of the thinking behind the user testing and user centred design approach being taken for the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser projects.
As well as sharing their step-by-step guides for developing your own user personas the team have also published their own user personas for you to compare and contrast to yours:
- UX2.0 / AQUABROWSERUX User Personas
- [Part 1] User Research and Persona Creation: Data Gathering Methods
- [Part 2] User Research and Persona Creation: Segmentation – Six Steps to our Qualitative Personas
- [Part 3] User Research and Persona Creation: Introducing the Personas
The #AQUABROWSERUX project produced a full report on their usability testing. It has some particularly interesting findings around the usability (or lack thereof) of the AquaBrowser wordcloud and how useful the participants found being able to view a book's table of contents in helping them decide whether they'd found a book that would be useful for their studies. They also posted videos showing highlights of the user testing:
Video 1: Faceted Navigation
Video 2: Information Seeking
Video 3: Word Cloud
The project team have taken a very reflective approach to their usability testing so there's lots of lessons learnt to dig through:
- Recruitment evaluation and screening for personas
- Realism in testing search interfaces
- SWOT analysis of the persona research phase of the project (which also contains a link to their interview script)
Boon Low's guide to 'in the wild' usability evaluations also makes for good reading.
The #ENCLAVELMS project produced some useful analyses of the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser usability test resport as part of their Work Package 1 Report [pdf].
I don't feel like I can really hope to do justice to all that the project teams have managed to produce so I'd encourage you to have a dig around on the UX2.0 wiki for other hidden gems. The full usability report [pdf] from the UX2.0 project would also be a good place to start.
It's a bit hard to know how to structure this post so that it doesn't get a tad confusing but here goes ...
This blogpost gives an overview of the thinking behind the user testing and user centred design approach being taken for the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser projects.
As well as sharing their step-by-step guides for developing your own user personas the team have also published their own user personas for you to compare and contrast to yours:
- UX2.0 / AQUABROWSERUX User Personas
- [Part 1] User Research and Persona Creation: Data Gathering Methods
- [Part 2] User Research and Persona Creation: Segmentation – Six Steps to our Qualitative Personas
- [Part 3] User Research and Persona Creation: Introducing the Personas
The #AQUABROWSERUX project produced a full report on their usability testing. It has some particularly interesting findings around the usability (or lack thereof) of the AquaBrowser wordcloud and how useful the participants found being able to view a book's table of contents in helping them decide whether they'd found a book that would be useful for their studies. They also posted videos showing highlights of the user testing:
Video 1: Faceted Navigation
Video 2: Information Seeking
Video 3: Word Cloud
The project team have taken a very reflective approach to their usability testing so there's lots of lessons learnt to dig through:
- Recruitment evaluation and screening for personas
- Realism in testing search interfaces
- SWOT analysis of the persona research phase of the project (which also contains a link to their interview script)
Boon Low's guide to 'in the wild' usability evaluations also makes for good reading.
The #ENCLAVELMS project produced some useful analyses of the UX2.0 and AquaBrowser usability test resport as part of their Work Package 1 Report [pdf].
I don't feel like I can really hope to do justice to all that the project teams have managed to produce so I'd encourage you to have a dig around on the UX2.0 wiki for other hidden gems. The full usability report [pdf] from the UX2.0 project would also be a good place to start.
Tabbloid #11: 10 Dec 2010
Last week's Tabbloid proves that big announcements come in small packages:
- the #ENCLAVELMS project announced that the code for their wordcloud software has been uploaded to sourceforge and are inviting suggestions for how it can be enhanced.
- the #OSSVIAB project shared news that version 3 of the United Kingdom Core Specification has been made available under a Creative Commons licence.
Tabbloid also picked up an interesting post from the UX2.0 project at Edinburgh University which reported on a number of university libraries (in the UK and further afield) which are offering services via mobile devices
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Tabbloid #7 and #8: Double Bonanza
I have been away on holiday in a remote Northumbrian cottage so there's a double dose of Tabbloid delights for you this week:
Some noteworthy points are as follows:
Last weeks Tabbloid could pretty much be renamed the 'Culwidget Weekly' it features their final project posts and some widget usage graphs that offer some fairly compelling evidence for the success of a couple of their widgets (albeit with plenty of room for further improvement in the coming year). In their final project blogpost the team put their finger on something that we've observed as outside observers; namely that the end of the JISC project doesnot mean the end of the project blog (or project tweets). It will be interesting to see how many of the projects remain active after their project funding has come to an end. From our point of view it may well mean that there is more to synthesis than we'd initially anticipated and no doubt these post-project reflections and progress reports will provide us with some much valued content to draw on as we start to consider our final report. All good stuff!
The #UX2 team posted a useful reflection on their usability testing experience and provided a link to their final report. Usability testing is another of those times when we are reminded that if it weren't for those pesky users (in this case recruiting volunteers and then dealing with the sometimes inevitable number of no shows) then the task would be much simpler. Of course without the users there would be no user testing so it's a challenge that has to be overcome. And of course with a small usability study every no show has a bigger impact so we'll be on the look out for any tips around ensuring the maximum turnout and we'll share what we find. As a big fan of word clouds, I was pleased to see the inclusion of one in Lorraine's post - it really brings out the overall tone of users' feedback in an effective way.
Some noteworthy points are as follows:
- the #SALFMERI project are part of the Electronic Resource Management (ERM) strand and have been looking at their current procedures in preparation for identifying ERM use cases and requirements. This investigation has been a very useful exercise for them which has revealed that information on electronic resources within Salford University (and the people who use them/have a strategic interest in them) is highly dispersed and hard to find - in fact often the information is invisible because it is locked inside one person's head. The team are working towards a single process map which will draw together all of this tacit and explicit knowledge ... it should be quite a sight to behold once it's complete!
- the #CULWIDGETS team at Cambridge have been working on a set of 'permanent' webpages for their website which will act as guide for any future intrepid widget authors. The fruits of their labour look to be a pretty extensive and clearly written guide which will be accessible to non-technical staff ... quite frankly it's an inspiring piece of work and a good legacy for the project to leave behind. It will be interesting to know whether there is an appointed guardian in place to update the guide as things move forward. There's also a very handy link to the Google guide to widgets. It's interesting to note that Google have named them 'gadgets' rather than widgets ... perhaps to get over the perception of frivolity that is conjoured up by the word 'widget' (which is identified as an issue within the CULWIDGETS guide)?
Last weeks Tabbloid could pretty much be renamed the 'Culwidget Weekly' it features their final project posts and some widget usage graphs that offer some fairly compelling evidence for the success of a couple of their widgets (albeit with plenty of room for further improvement in the coming year). In their final project blogpost the team put their finger on something that we've observed as outside observers; namely that the end of the JISC project doesnot mean the end of the project blog (or project tweets). It will be interesting to see how many of the projects remain active after their project funding has come to an end. From our point of view it may well mean that there is more to synthesis than we'd initially anticipated and no doubt these post-project reflections and progress reports will provide us with some much valued content to draw on as we start to consider our final report. All good stuff!
The #UX2 team posted a useful reflection on their usability testing experience and provided a link to their final report. Usability testing is another of those times when we are reminded that if it weren't for those pesky users (in this case recruiting volunteers and then dealing with the sometimes inevitable number of no shows) then the task would be much simpler. Of course without the users there would be no user testing so it's a challenge that has to be overcome. And of course with a small usability study every no show has a bigger impact so we'll be on the look out for any tips around ensuring the maximum turnout and we'll share what we find. As a big fan of word clouds, I was pleased to see the inclusion of one in Lorraine's post - it really brings out the overall tone of users' feedback in an effective way.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
live music, live systems and real live users
While I was standing in muddy, windswept fields in Wales and Yorkshire enjoying live music (and a pint of ale or two) the JISC LMS projects have been zooming forward at a rate of knots. Some of the significant events from the last week or so are:
- 26th August: York St John University carried out usability testing #yocalcat
- 27th August: York St John University went live with their local WorldCat implementation #yocalcat
- 27th August: The #AquaBrowserUX results of live user testing were published
- 30th August: Edinburgh published part two of their guide to creating user personas #AquaBrowserUX #ux2
- 31st August: Northumbria University's Summon instance (NORA Power Search) went live. #summon4hn
- 1st September: There has been a lot going on with the VuFind KEVEN project at Kent University and the new interface goes live on the library website tomorrow https://catalogue.kent.ac.uk/ #vufindkeven
And that's probably not everything! I'll post any other significant updates here as and when I spot them.
The AquaBrowserUX 'contextual inquiry' usability results made for very interesting reading:
- there's evidence to support my pet theory that users have a low awareness of library catalogue search 'brand' (in this case, AquaBrowser).
- the users wanted to start their search with a blank slate and went to unnecessary lengths to achieve this objective.
A blogpost on the #SWWHEP project blog about user feedback on their iFind advanced search has got me thinking about just how difficult it is to make search intuitive and simple as soon as you go beyond the 'one box fits all' Google-style search interface. I thought it might be useful to post links to a few of the other projects' advanced search pages to allow for easy comparing and contrasting:
- #SWWHEP iFind advanced search
- #YOCALCAT advanced search
- #SUMMON4HN Nora advanced search
It will be interesting to share usability tips between the projects and look at what the logfiles reveal about how often users actually use the advanced search feature vs the simple search.
As part of the synthesis role I'm carrying out Dave Flanders has given me a mandate to be slightly leftfield so I'm also going to share a couple of advanced search examples from outside of the #JISCLMS programme:
- International Children's Digital Library advanced search
- The Leeds Library advanced search (using Heritage LMS)
- 26th August: York St John University carried out usability testing #yocalcat
- 27th August: York St John University went live with their local WorldCat implementation #yocalcat
- 27th August: The #AquaBrowserUX results of live user testing were published
- 30th August: Edinburgh published part two of their guide to creating user personas #AquaBrowserUX #ux2
- 31st August: Northumbria University's Summon instance (NORA Power Search) went live. #summon4hn
- 1st September: There has been a lot going on with the VuFind KEVEN project at Kent University and the new interface goes live on the library website tomorrow https://catalogue.kent.ac.uk/ #vufindkeven
And that's probably not everything! I'll post any other significant updates here as and when I spot them.
The AquaBrowserUX 'contextual inquiry' usability results made for very interesting reading:
- there's evidence to support my pet theory that users have a low awareness of library catalogue search 'brand' (in this case, AquaBrowser).
- the users wanted to start their search with a blank slate and went to unnecessary lengths to achieve this objective.
A blogpost on the #SWWHEP project blog about user feedback on their iFind advanced search has got me thinking about just how difficult it is to make search intuitive and simple as soon as you go beyond the 'one box fits all' Google-style search interface. I thought it might be useful to post links to a few of the other projects' advanced search pages to allow for easy comparing and contrasting:
- #SWWHEP iFind advanced search
- #YOCALCAT advanced search
- #SUMMON4HN Nora advanced search
It will be interesting to share usability tips between the projects and look at what the logfiles reveal about how often users actually use the advanced search feature vs the simple search.
As part of the synthesis role I'm carrying out Dave Flanders has given me a mandate to be slightly leftfield so I'm also going to share a couple of advanced search examples from outside of the #JISCLMS programme:
- International Children's Digital Library advanced search
- The Leeds Library advanced search (using Heritage LMS)
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