DSpace/DWELL Usability Results

1. Users assumed that terms were being AND'ed in the search box.

a. types in full author name in search box, assumes is will find don AND harelman by default

b. types in first and last name of author in search box, but it's not helpful

c. types in a full title in the search box, assumes it's ANDing the words

d. did not understand search was OR-ing terms until told

Consider making the search box AND terms by default, since that's what everyone assumed it would do.

(like Google)

If not, make if VERY clear what it really does, with examples.

a. finds list of communities overwhelming, hard to scan

b. found it hard to scan the list of communities to find a specific one (wished for it to be alphabetical)

c. hard to browse through list of communities on home page, wants alpha order

d. Would prefer an alphabetical listing of communities or a dropdown menu like barton thesis search

e. What is the main list of communities on the front page? It's a weird list and there is no description about why it is chosen a list for the main search page. It's also hard to read. It would be easier to read if it were color coordinated into groups and used indents.

f. It's not clear why the communities that are on the main listing are there - how were those chosen?

g. "I want to know what a community is. They are ordered by size, which makes them hard to find."

h. I'd like the communities ordered in a more sensible way than # of items. Alphabetically by something meaningful or categorized by things like departments, labs, etc.

i. Long list to find something in. He almost missed "Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems" because he was scanning for LIDS.

j. Not clear what is a community and what is not--he thought he'd find the "Joint Program for the Science and Policy of Global Change Reports" in the community list.

k. An option to change the way the lists on the page are sorted (alphabetized?) could help make them useful.

l. couldn't navigate list of communities (some did Find-F in page to try to find some)

m. Not obvious what is included in "Communities" on the front page and what is not.

n. Community list should offer more sort options, so you don't need to use the "find on page" browser function. Alphabetical? By course number?

o. The list of communities is too long--he used CTRL-F to search the page.

Consider putting list of communities in alphabetical order, or allowing the user to sort alphabetically.

Rethink whether "communities" is the only or best facet to show on the front page.

Define what is meant by "communities."

a. wants to be able to do a search by creator on the home page

b. Wants a more advanced search, specifically to be able to search by author.

c. Searching for names was confusing. Wanted to be able to search and sort by creator. Should be able to specify creator: Abelson. Would like a more advanced search option

d. More options for searching--search for author, or title, or whatever.

e. really wanted to just search by author or title

f. No ability to search by different fields (for example, he tried to search "don harleman author").

a. No guidance on seach box syntax (and it's not intuitive)

b. want notes about how to search

c. It's not clear what is being searched from general search box - names of communities? People?

d. Not sure how the search would handle a hyphen.

e. Put tips for searching on the front page

f. No syntax descriptions to guide the text searches

g. There should be some sort of explanation of the search syntax on this page.

h. No descriptions on how to format searches; he guessed to use quotes after I told him about what was happening with plain text searches.

a. Thinks typing a search and clicking one of the media types will run the search in that type.

b. Expected that typing in a search term and then clicking a Media Type will run that search in that Media Type only.

c. The media type links don't work when the media type is missing from the records (like for LIDS Tech Reports)

Move the media types to a clearly separate region of the screen (not close to the search box).

Make the search box more prominent with its own box or region of the screen... separate from the other parts of the home page.

a. tried quoted search for "Don Harleman" - found 0 results since he is listed under Donald

b. had typo in his quoted search (forgot "of" in Management of Technology Program)

a. Didn't find the search box right away, and started clicking the other links instead. "The search box is too small."

b. didn't notice search box... did a "find in page" at first.

a. looks at the sort by menu and finds all those options confusing

b. looked at the sort menu, but confused by all the choices in it

c. A lot of the sort options are pointless, especially for a big set.

d. There are too many options under "sort by."

a. not sure of difference between community, contributor, collection

b. not sure the difference between communities, collections, contributors

c. Not clear what category certain things fall into (this is in addition to the non-descriptive names)

d. suggest providing more than 1 word descriptions for attribute filters, or providing a link from them to more information about what they are/mean; described as "confusing"

e. Wants more descriptive filter names, specifically "author" or "works by..."

f. Not clear what things fall into what facets: Where is "LIDS Technical Reports"? Or OCW stuff? Had to click through several facets to find the right one, even late in the test when he had started to understand the facet names a little better.

g. It's not clear what the difference between some of the facets are (particularly Contributor vs. Creator), or what the names mean (Audience).

h. "Too many of the terms are synonymous," like created by or published by. Clicked around a lot looking for certain things, like type.

i. The titles for the facets aren't very descriptive.

Consider renaming the different filters with more unique names.

Have definitions of the names available.

3. a. never used the "filter by" search box

b. thinks the filter box is really a new search box and types new queries there

c. doesn't understand what the "filter by" box is doing, keeps trying new searches and thinks it's saving each one and doing it as a separate search

d. suggests we make it more descriptive that you are searching WITHIN results ("Text search" doesn't say much).

e. never used the filter box on the results screen to narrow

f. It's not immediately obvious what the filters do; he overlooked it after the first search attempt

g. Text search filter is not clear that it's a filter

h. Suggest labeling the text search on the results page as "refine search"

i. Thought the text search box was a new search. Never was dispelled of this notion.

j. Did not realize that during one of his searches he was searching within the results of a previous search and therefore no answer was found. He started a new search to answer the question.

k. Not clear what the text search does.

l. Searched within results page and got no results

m. had trouble starting new search, didn't realize facets were still in effect, tried searching the facets search box for new search

n. "The search box should clearly say that it only searches within the results."

o. Searched within results page and got no results

p. Took a while to find the filters.

q. Thinks that the text search is a box for a new search. Takes him a long time to figure out that it's not.

Add a clear label to the "filter by" box.... not "text search."

Say:
"search within results"

In addition, add an actual "new search" box in top center of results page with a clear label. That's the traditional place for it.

Hopefully by having the "filter by" box off to the right, above the filters, that will help make it more clear that it's not a new search box.

a. doesn't see the filters for quite a while and at first doesn't think they are clickable

b. at first, didn't see the facets as clickable

c. wants an explanation of what the attribute filters are.

Make the filters look more clickable... consider underlines, rollover color change or something to cue that you can click on them.

Perhaps an instruction by each: "filter by creator"

6. a. confused by reverse alpha order in the creator facet

b. confused about how things are sorted in the facets

c. Wants the list for each filter to be sorted alphabetically and not by number of hits so that it's easier to browse through.

d. "I want to be able to reorder listings in attribute filters"

e. Too much scrolling to get through the filters in a big set.

f. The results list is too big and requires too much scrolling to get from one item to the next: "Too much information. Maybe have an expand option, like Barton does."

Consider showing only the top 10 values in each facet with a "more.." link.

Consider alpha order instead of by number of hits... would be so much easier to browse through long lists.

a. not sure if creator is the same as author

b. confused about the term, "creator" (is it author?)

c. "What is creator? Someone who enters things into the database? The author?" Creator vs contributor - it's not intuitive

8. Variant forms of name were either not noticed or led to confusion.

a. doesn't ever realize that there is harold abelson as well as hal abelson

b. confused about different forms of the same person's name

c. Doesn't like that the same name is listed multiple times in the facet lists.

d. didn't notice variant names

e. didn't notice variant names

f. Not confident that he had all of the papers by Harleman even after looking through the Creator filter for them.

g. didn't notice variant names

h. Noticed Abelson, Harold (15) and Abelson, Hal (5) -"it's not intuitive that they are the same author - that's a problem"

i. The names need to be standardized.

j. Didn't totally understand why the creator names were in the list multiple times. Found that hard to pick up at first.

k. did not find all forms of names in the creator facet

l. Doesn't find the multiple listings for the same person in the Creator list (without some encouragement).

m. After using the text search for "management of technology" to narrow down the sloan theses, he wasn't confident that he hap all of the Management of Technology Program theses.

n. Did not notice the variation with names and missed parts of the answer

o. Doesn't figure out that the same name is in the list multiple times.

Either clean up and bring together different forms of the name or warn people that this hasn't been done.

If the facet values are sorted alphabetically it will be easier to see the different forms of the name together in the list, at least.

a. wondered about results listing from searching for names - noticed that some results include thesis, where the person would be the advisor, not the author. She noted she would read through them individually if she needed it for research because she can't do any sorting by author.

b. wondered about results listing from searching for names - are they written solely or cooperatively by the person, or are they about a person?

Offer clear labels for advisor vs. author.

If an author search was added on the home page, that would help... it could be set to exclude thesis advisors.

a. A red x would be more intuitive than the current red slash (on the left side of the text search filterbox) to indicate clicking would remove the text search filter.

b. Not clear what the red icon next to each text search does (even if you understand how the text search works).

Change display to this:

"[x] - current search term: abelson"

The box is checked in front of what they searched for. To remove that term, they uncheck the box.

(see pcconnection.com for examples of a standard way to do this)

After user selects a value from a facet, close it up again and display what they selected in an area near the top. They can then open another facet and make selections, which keep getting added to the area at the top that shows all their choices.

See pcconnection.com for examples of this.

a. to get home, kept almost clicking on "Add view" since it was where he thought the home link should be

b. to start a new search, kept almost linking on “add view” since it’s the first link

1. a. wants us to get rid of values that say "missing"

b. "Missing" in the filters is confusing.

c. get rid of the "missing" values