Enhancing User Interactions in Digital Libraries

Tech Note: Developing Faceted Search Using Apache Solr, Part 2

Faceted search is becoming a de facto search feature for websites such as online stores and digital libraries. From interaction design perspective, faceted search is essentially an alternative to advanced search - “post-coordinate boolean operations via a navigational metaphor”. It has a propensity to enhance the affordance of advanced search, as less efforts are required from the users to perform the equivalent and traditionally more convoluted search tasks.

This post describes the faceted search infrastructure development of the JISC UX2 project. The infrastructure is based on Apache Solr, a Java-based faceted search platform. In Part 1 of this post, I described the general setup of Solr for multi-sourced data, metadata (MARC XML) mapping and the experience of importing the CERN book dataset using Solr's Data Import Hanlder (DIH). For the purpose of UI prototyping and testing, UX2 is incorporating the CERN dataset in combinant with existing digital library content held in a Fedora Commons repository. The rest of this post provides an account of the development of Solr, to enable metadata and rich binary documents (PDF, PowerPoints etc) from a Fedora repository, to be indexed for faceted search service.

This is also a technical report for JISC. If the content is too lengthy, you can skip to "Epilogue" to review the outputs directly.

Going "in the wild"

User research has been a key activity of the AquaBrowserUX and UX2 projects lately. In a previous post, I outlined a scope of user research involving library persona development, usability testing and contextual inquiry. The activities fulfil two general aims, 1) to bolster usability research capability and practice, 2) to evaluate specific usability issues of existing library services. The research involves various qualitative and quantitative methods such that richer case studies can be attained without relying on a single approach. We have just completed the development of library personas (approach and outcomes - two posts to come). Usability testing of AquaBrowser is currently underway.

One of our evaluation goals is to gain insight into how library services are being used in real scenarios involving authentic tasks. This post describes a pilot contextual inquiry, a field study of real users and AquaBrowser usage. The aim is to evaluate the usefulness of the system in a specific use context at the University of Edinburgh.

Usefulness of Project Outputs (Studies, UCD)

We have been undertaking two JISC projects: UX2 and AquaBrowserUX. Both of these projects are addressing user-centric issues surrounding the development and provision of digital library systems. In general, digital libraries (DLs) have become increasingly complex in terms of scope and nature, from a variety of repositories to virtual environments (see a previous post). New ways of providing user interface and user experience have emerged, for example the use of AJAX, novel interaction patterns (e.g. mspace) and a multitude of user-centric 'rehash' of traditional library practices (e.g. tagging, folksonomy).

These developments present challenges to institutions and wider communities involving in digital library developments. Usability is one of the challenges. There have been significant investments in new technology developments in the JISC Community. If these developments especially those in the guise of 'rapid innovation', are to achieve full impacts, they must be usable and widely taken up by the intended users. Usefulness is another key aspect. A well implemented and usable system may be irrelevant if it is not required or useful to the users in real-use and beyond proof-of-concept scenarios.

The projects attempt to tackle these issues and involve deliverables ranging from technology development to usability and evaluation studies (see the plans of UX2 and AquaBrowserUX). This post considers the wider implications and benefits of the project outputs with respect to the institution associated with the project - the University of Edinburgh, and wider communities.

User Study of AquaBrowser and UX2.0

Resource discovery services for digital library have evolved significantly. There is an increasing use of dynamic user interface. New ways of user interactions are also emerging. Faceted searching for example provides a “navigational metaphor” for boolean search operations. It also results in greater user satisfaction (Olson 2007). AquaBrowser is a leading library product which provides faceted searching and new resource discovery features based on emerging interaction design patterns ('fresh, modern interface' according SerialsSolutions). These features appear to support better ways of searching: fast drill-down of results, enhanced search context.

An interaction design pattern we explored earlier this year, through a UX2.0 study (heuristic inspection) is the "Word Cloud" feature which according to SerialsSolution provides context-sensitive exploration. The unique UI is essentially a composite design pattern based on word (tag) cloud and spatial navigation - a term coined by the Nielsen Norman Group. AquaBrowser's tag cloud is unique as it does not utilise the typical size effect and rely on colours showing different types of word association. It also uses spatial navigation in combinant - tags move or reorganising during user interactions. Despite its popularity, the use of tag cloud even in its most basic form, remains contentious and nascent at least from usability perspectives. A recent statement from the Nielsen Norman Usability Week has urged sites to use tag cloud with caution and certainly not to use it for mainstream purposes. Furthermore this technique may either become a standard design or expire in a few years. On the contrary, recent studies on AquaBrowser have confounded the usual dismissive views of word cloud, suggesting potential for serendipitous discovery even for domain experts (Olson 2007). Moreover, word cloud has been an active subject in digital library research and development, e.g. as a visualisation device to gauge content relevance 'as a glance' (Gottron 2009).