Primo Usability Testing - Details Post #3

This is the third of our 3 posts giving a detailed write-up of our usability testing.

Section 3 – Finding Databases and Post-Test Discussion

Question 10 - Your lecturer has told you to search the database ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts). How would you find it and access it.

In this question we were attempting to find out the visibility of the Find Databases link (as it is only shown in the Articles etc. tab), and to see how testers used the functionality within the Lightbox to access a specific database. We were aware before the testing that an alternative method of finding a named database existed i.e. searching by name in the Books etc. tab and only 1 tester used this method. All 9 other testers used the Find Databases link – 3 testers needed prompting to either go in to the articles tab, or to look around the screen to see if they could see a link. 3 testers saw the Find Databases link straight away, and 3 others saw it after moving between the Books and Articles tabs. Some testers tried to use the options within the Advanced Search in the Articles tab before noticing the Find Databases link.
In terms of actually accessing ASSIA, of the 9 testers who used the Lightbox, 5 ticked on the checkbox expecting that it would open up the database. 2 of these then went on to click on ‘Selected Databases’ in the Lightbox which automatically took them out of the Lightbox and back to the Article etc tab search screen with the selected database as a ‘quickset’. This was very confusing for the testers as there was no warning or indication of what had happened. To access ASSIA the testers needed to click on the title of the database and 4 did this straight away without ticking the checkbox, and 3 others clicked on the title after ticking the checkbox and having nothing happen.
Recommendations:
• Make the Find Databases link appear in both the Articles etc tab and the Books etc tab – Ex Libris are looking in to this.
• Make the Find Databases link more visible – some testers commented that it was hidden away in the corner – we have aligned this to the left-hand side, immediately above the main search box and used a larger font.
• Provide instructions for students on finding named databases on the front page of Primo.
• Remove the checkboxes from the Lightbox and remove un-needed functionality (e.g. ‘Selected Databases’) – Ex Libris have removed the checkboxes and have taken out some of the functionality within the Lightbox. This needs more development work in the future.

Question 11 - ASSIA isn’t finding you the articles you want and you’re not sure what other databases you should use to find articles from the Business & Economics subject area. How would you find a list of databases recommended for this subject?

In this question we were looking at whether the testers would be able to find a list of databases relevant to a specific subject area from the information available to them in the Lightbox. Many of the testers were already in the Lightbox when they attempted this question and found a list of databases relatively quickly although many clicked on several drop-down menus before realising the information they wanted was in Category – this indicates that more work needed to be done to ensure that this was more intuitive. Some testers suggested using ‘Subject’ instead of ‘Category’ to indicate more clearly. Some testers also seemed to expect the list at the bottom of the Lightbox to automatically switch to the chosen subject area and it took a few seconds for them to click on the Find Databases link instead. This expectation could be due to their experiences within Metalib where the list automatically opens.
Recommendations:
• Re-name ‘category’ as something more intuitive – this has been re-named as ‘subject’.
• Insert text in to ‘Category’ box to indicate to students that they can choose a subject area i.e. ‘Select subject area’.

Post-Test Discussion / General Observations

Many testers thought that once they were used to the new site they would find it easy to use, especially as it had everything in one place unlike the library catalogue and eLibrary. Some suggested that the new site was more professional than the other library search tools they had used.

Facets – The majority of testers thought that the facets were best placed on the left-hand side of the screen – some testers mentioned websites such as Google and Tesco in comparison. All testers thought that the facets would be useful to them when searching library resources; however some commented that work could be done to make them more visible e.g. some testers didn’t notice them until they were pointed out. It was encouraging throughout the tests to see some testers using them on searches that didn’t explicitly require them to do so.

Reviews & Tags – None of the testers knew what a Tag was. When we explained to them that they could add their own keywords to individual catalogue records and asked if they thought this was useful some of them did think it would be. However, most of them were thinking of using the Tags as a way for them to retrieve records at a later date. It would probably be easier for them to just save these records to their personal Primo space (e-Shelf or My Favourites as we renamed it). When a scenario of tagging records that could be useful for other students working on a joint project was suggested most testers thought that this was a good idea. However, the fact that most of them didn’t think of this or any other social-networking way of using tags seems to imply that this functionality may not be well used. We are planning to leave the Reviews & Tags function switched on and see how much use it gets.

Other Actions based on the Usability Tests:
• The ‘More’ tab was removed as it duplicated information found in other tabs and was felt to be irrelevant.
• The main tabs were relabelled as ‘Books, Journals, Media & More’ and ‘Articles & More’ to differentiate the types of content in each tab.
• Some tabs were re-ordered to give more prominence to actual availability e.g. the ‘Locations’ tab (re-named ‘Availability’) is now either the first or second in the list rather than appearing after the ‘Request’ tab.
• The ‘New Search’ link needed to be made much clearer – a few testers commented that they couldn’t find a way to clear their search – we have left-justified this and made the font bigger.
• The e-shelf was misleading for quite a few testers, as they thought this was an area where they could search for e-resources – we have now re-named this as My Favourites in keeping with the general trends found on other mainstream websites.