Enhancing User Interactions in Digital Libraries

Agile User Interface Development

I came away from a DevCSI workshop: paper-based agile design techniques beaming with ideas. The workshop provided a useful introduction to agile methodologies and card-based techniques. Agile techniques are relevant to UX2's development of library systems and user interfaces, which are mainly working prototypes for evaluation purposes. Adopting an agile method seems logical. In a previous post, I described the work on an open source library user interface. The prototype has since been evaluated through a usability test involving a group of users from the University of Edinburgh. This post discusses the agile method introduced at the DevCSI workshop as a plausible development framework for UX2's UI development following the usability test.

Implementing Faceted Search User Interface

A digital library can be underpinned by a search platform such as Apache Solr, which facilitates faceted search services. In my previous posts, I have described the development of a Solr-based search engine infrastructure, involving metadata and rich binary documents indexing of multi-sourced data, viz., the CERN Library book data, content from a digital repository (Fedora). The search engine only provides underpinning services. It does not provide a user interface.

This post outlines the work involved in prototyping a digital library user interface - UX2 Library. It describes the UX design, development made with respect to an associated open source technology. We have recently tested the prototype with a group of users from the University of Edinburgh and published the results: summary and report. In my next post, I shall propose an agile technique based on 'user stories', to address the usability issues arising from this user study.

For a general introduction to both faceted search and Apache Solr, see "Developing Faceted Search Using Apache Solr, Part 1".

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.