Design Recommendations

Design Recommendations

After watching the participants attempt to complete the selected tasks during the ten usability sessions, getting to listen to their feedback, watching the recordings, and collecting the data via the rubric, I have discovered several design changes that could help users find what they need on the LibGuides. Making the LibGuides more useful, while following some of the best practices the research team outline in their previous research, could help the user experience.

1. The location and labeling of the LibGuides on the library homepage

Currently the LibGuides are hiding under a drop down menu on the middle of the library homepage and label "Research by Subject". The label is confusing for students and the lack of obvious dropdown capabilities is challenging because a user does not know where the link goes or what to expect when clicking on the button. 70% of study participants were unable to find a specific LibGuide. From the data collected we have seen students use the LibGuides for help with specific courses, if they have general research needs they prefer the search function.

Recommendations:

  • Change label to something more course specific. One study participant suggested "select your course". I think this would be a more suitable label that makes the user understand there are many options to choose from and are created for specific courses and subjects.
  • Make the arrow for the direction of the dropdown visible to users. Between the term "select" on the label and a large, visible down arrow it will be easier to see that this is a dropdown menu the user is able to select from.

2. Contact Information on the LibGuide

Currently the contact me section is pretty easy to spot, but could use a few minor tweaks as 20% of the participants did have challenges finding the librarian's contact information.

Recommendations:

  • The label "Profile" should be more descriptive, some study participants did not know the librarian pictured was also the author of the LibGuide. Guide Author or Guide Creator would be a more descriptive label for this contact box.
  • The "Email Me" button is helpful and visually easy to identify, but if you are using a public computer or do not have your email settings created on your device the button does not work. Underneath the "Email Me" button, should also be the text of the librarian's email address. Having the alternative text also assists with users who have visual impairments and are using a text to speech software to view the website.

3. Selected Internet Resources

The label for "Selected Internet Resources" made a couple of the tasks challenging because users didn't know which section to click on. The label isn't descriptive enough and could be changed to help users better understand what can be found in this section. The tasks with the most mixed results came from this section of the website, some students were able to stumble upon the section by clicking on the navigation and following through to the website they were asked to find. Between the two tasks asked of students during the usability study only an average of 30% of students were able to find the requested website under this header.

Recommendations:

  • To highlight the resource gems hidden under this label the name should be changed to something students would find more descriptive, "Research Sources" or "Research Website Sources" or "More Sources" would help.

4. Article Help & Book Help

Both of these tasks provided similar results and I think a couple tweaks to the navigational design will make for a better user experience in both the article and book sections of the guide. An average of 50% of the study participants had difficulty with both tasks and the difficulty experienced was the same is each task. The design for each section is similar even though the goal of each section is slightly different. The same design changes to each would make for a better user experience and make it more clear to the user what each section has to offer. The dropdown capability is confusing for the user because it looks like that is all that is contained in each section. When the user clicks on the label it changes the way the navigation is displayed and expands the options a user can choose from. These two states of the navigation should be updated.

State 1 & 2

Recommendations:

  • Remove the feature for expanding the section for each navigation tab. It doesn't show everything that is on the page and is not consistent with the other label styles. This is the only portion of the navigation that expands this way and it is confusing to users.

5. Best Bets Label

Participants had trouble with this section of the LibGuide because freshmen are not experienced enough to understand a website versus a database and graduates had trouble with the terminology as it is not meaningful enough. 40% of participants had a difficult time finding a "recommended database" from the guide as nothing was labeled with something this meaningful or direct.

Recommendations:

  • Change "Best Bets" to "Best Databases", this is meaningful to the student and follows the best practice of descriptive labeling. This alerts newer researchers to understand that these resources link to databases.

6. Citing Sources

This task was confusing for some users, particularly undergraduate students and those who are new to research. Being able to properly cite sources is often a big portion of student's grades on research papers and professors take this seriously. To ensure students have access to these resources on creating bibliographies and properly citing sources the labeling needs to be clear. Up until recently these resources were available in print at the service desk of the library, but the library stopped offering that service. Because this information is now only available online it is essential that it is easy to find on each and every guide.

Recommendations:

  • Change the label from "Citing Sources" to "Citing Sources & Bibliographies" to ensure students don't get caught up in academic jargon and can see what exactly is under that portion of the guide.

7. InterLibrary Loan

InterLibrary Loan (ILL) is a free service that gets materials the user's home library doesn't own, to them in 72 hours. This service is great for students as they can get textbooks, journal articles and research sources from a variety of places, even if the university does not own the item. ILL is confusing! All aspects of the service is confusing to users, how, where, when and what are all things that ILL in digital form don't explain very well. A descriptive label on the LibGuide homepage that links a user to the ILL website would greatly benefit the user and the library. The library pays the same price for the service if 100 people use it or if 1,000 people use it. It is beneficial to market the service anywhere users may need to use it.

Recommendations:

  • On the guide template homepage add a generously sized button for "Get articles and books from another library" that links to the ILL website where the service is explained in detail. This button should be near the resources students typically use (such as databases and the search bar).