Lauren Campbell, Senior Honours Student
from Central Michigan University
- slides will be posted on IUG site
- Lauren did usability study for her Honour Project (is going to Lib school in the fall, and worked in the lib)
- step 1: talk to users (including, for them: students / faculty / staff)
- showed focus group other III opacs, to demo features / styles / the possibilities out there they were considering
- projected these, and their then-current opac on a screen, for discussion
- had 8 students in focus group, lured by extra credit, pizza and brownies
- "I just wanna search"
- choose advanced keyword search as first screen -- were surprised students wanted the anti-googlesque paradigm -- however, they have had the advanced search screen as default on all their databases for a number of years, and worked hard to train students to use them
- students wanted clear directions for other search options (eg. type author's name with last name first...)
- every search screen has a "My Centra" (ie: My Library Card) log-in box (which would address OUR common comments re too many clicks to get to My lib Card)
- combined 'wants' of students with prof judgment / balanced with comments / opinions of faculty..."make them eat their veg" idea
- neat list of features (good slide) similar to what we're looking at eg spell check seen as a no-brainer vs. nah, we're not going to write reviews
- Usability study:
- tasks based on new design features / elements
- used situations rather than just questions
- they have an OPAC group/committee that meets regularly...nice!...but also have lots of staff!
- spent a year...took time for user feedback
- planning to do it again before 10 years go by...will continue to solicit user feedback
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