Bringing in the Experts: Library Research Guide Usability Testing in a Computer Science Class

Abstract

2013 Cobus-Kuo, Gilmour, and Dickson. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -We sought to develop best practices for creating online research guides in an academic library.Methods -We performed usability tests of particular library research guides in order to determine how to improve them. Students in a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) class (n=20) participated in the studies both as subjects of the tests and as evaluators of the results. The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2013, 8.4 44 students were each interviewed and then asked to review the interviews recorded of four other classmates. Based on their own experience with the guides and their viewing of their classmates using the guides, the students worked with librarians to develop best practices.

Testing for Transition

“…9 At Ithaca College, subject librarians partnered with students in a Human-Computer Interaction course to test both course guides and subject guides through a series of usability tests, pre-and post-test questionnaires, and a group discussion in which students evaluated the findings of the usability tests and discussed their experiences. 10 At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, librarians conducted usability testing with both undergraduate students and librarians, and surprisingly found that attitudes towards the guides were similar in both groups: interface design challenges were the greatest barrier to task completion, rather than the level of expertise of the user. 11 Finally, at Northwestern University, librarians conducted several types of usability tests as a part of a transition from the original LibGuides platform to LibGuides v2, to determine what features worked from the original guides and what could be improved or updated during the migration.…”

“…16 • Consistency of guide elements, both within a guide and from one guide to the next, helps users more easily orient themselves when using guides; certain elements should always be present in the same place on the page, including navigational elements and table of contents, contact information, supplemental resources such as citation and plagiarism information, and common search boxes. 17 With the findings and recommendations of these predecessors in mind, we designed a multi-stage study to expand upon their results and identify new challenges and opportunities that the LibGuides v2 platform might present.…”

Long Nav or Short Nav?: Student Responses to Two Different Navigational Interface Designs in LibGuides Version 2

“…Partly drawing from Cobus-Kuo et al (2013) as a model, five tasks designed to test the usability of each version of the guide were developed (see Appendix A). These tasks, identified as T1 through T5, were completed by all participants on both versions of the guide.…”