Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to share the process, findings and conclusions from one library’s iterative usability study of its website design to inform other libraries as they perform their own assessments.

Design/methodology/approach

A task-completion usability study was conducted with eight undergraduate students across two iterations: the first gauged the usability of a redesigned library website and the second gauged the effectiveness of the first iteration’s findings.

Findings

We found that users performed better when the site provided multiple access points to the same information, displayed a prominent chat feature, limited the amount of text on a given page and avoided library jargon. Not only was the second round of testing important for confirming that first-round recommendations were effective but also it proved useful in catching a problem with the site that was unintentionally created during the time between tests.

Research limitations/implications

No demographic data were collected during the study, thus hindering our ability to analyze our users through these data points.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates the value of iterative usability testing, especially when untested changes made between site versions may produce usability issues.

中文翻译：

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修改、redUX、再循环：评估周期中的迭代网站可用性研究

目的

本文的目的是分享一个图书馆对其网站设计进行迭代可用性研究的过程、发现和结论，以便在其他图书馆进行自己的评估时为他们提供信息。

设计/方法论/途径

对八名本科生进行了两次迭代的任务完成可用性研究：第一次评估了重新设计的图书馆网站的可用性，第二次评估了第一次迭代研究结果的有效性。

发现

我们发现，当网站提供对同一信息的多个访问点、显示突出的聊天功能、限制给定页面上的文本量并避免使用图书馆术语时，用户的表现会更好。第二轮测试不仅对于确认第一轮建议的有效性很重要，而且对于发现测试期间无意创建的网站问题也很有用。

研究局限性/影响

研究期间没有收集人口统计数据，因此阻碍了我们通过这些数据点分析用户的能力。

原创性/价值

这项研究证明了迭代可用性测试的价值，特别是当站点版本之间未经测试的更改可能会产生可用性问题时。