Digital Library Database
Needs Assessment and Usability Evaluation
The Client
An online database that allows students to search topics across various categories yielding resources of all types of mediums from images to articles and more. Currently, the client has created and database for college and university students in addition to their databases for students K-12. Each database caters to the typical information that students would find most helpful and a layout for the site that includes navigation and tools that make it easiest for students in a particular grade range to use the site.
Project Overview
After being introduced to the site via stakeholder interview, we created an interaction map for ourselves to better understand the overall workflow of the site and what basic functions it possesses. We then divided the overall project into four major areas of evaluation to explore all angles of the website database and effectively make our recommendations to further improve the UI and design of the site. We completed full reports for each section to provide an in-depth analysis of our findings at each stage.
Interviews
We recruited peers across our university as well as neighboring universities whom we thought would best fit the description of the target audience of the database. The target users can be best described as students starting at the undergraduate university standing or above that typically use online library databases to complete coursework, research, or leisure. The initial interviews with these users were to better understand the background of these students, why they would use databases, and to help us understand their needs from library databases. Below is a copy of the initial questionnaire of our interviewees.
Surveys
An excellent way to gather large quantities of data for user preferences is through surveys. We utilized Qualtrics to build, deploy, and track our data from our potential user base and gathered survey participants through email list servers, various social media groups, and discords. The goal of the surveys was not only to get to know the user base but to find correlations amongst different questions that would tell us more about user preferences as it came to online databases. One example of some data that we used a pivot table to correlate afterwards can be found below.
Heuristic Evaluation
A heuristic evaluation was determined to be more beneficial regarding the accurate assessment of the site using Nielson’s 10 usability heuristics rather than a comparative evaluation. This allowed the team to create a breakdown of each page of the site and tackle the site features found and mentioned in the interviews and surveys. The list of heuristics and our team breakdown can be found below.
Usability Testing
The final evaluation of our client’s site was user testing which was conducted separately from the interviews. The user testing portion of our project allowed for the unbiased walk-through of typical users that were recruited to perform a series of tasks. The goal of this section was to bring to light any site feedback or enjoyable features that were not already found by our team as usability experts and user preferences revealed in earlier interviews and surveys. We then compiled the feedback on a Google Sheet to organize the feedback and provide ways improve the site.
We completed a final video summarizing our findings. Feel free to contact me if you would like the video!
The Team
Members: Leila Boudalia, Catherine Lumanauw, Samuel Osei Afriyie
Timeline: January 2021 - April 2021
