Browse design in digital libraries: Impact on user experience

1. Browse design in digital libraries: Impact on user experience LIDA, Dubrovnik, May 28, 2007 Xiangmin Zhang, Yuelin Li, Jingjing Liu & Ying Zhang SCILS, Rutgers University {xzhang,lynnlee, jingjing,yinzhang}@scils.rutgers.edu

2. Outline • Background • Purpose of the study • Methodology • Results • Discussion

3. Background • IEEE supported research • Part of a large scale usability evaluation of Xplore digital library: • Searching & browsing designs • System performance issues • In comparison with ACM and IEEE CS • Started in March 2005, reports submitted to IEEE, Inc • Part of data yet to be analyzed

4. Purpose of the current study • The purpose of the study has two folds • to find out how the interaction designs for browsing would affect the user experience, and • to inform the design of better user experience in digital libraries

5. Research Questions • Do different browse design features (browsing conference proceedings) have an effect on users’ browsing experience? • What design features would lead to poor user experience?

6. Methodology • Three DLs and their browse features • Research design • Participants • Browsing task • Procedure

7. Three Digital Libraries • Three operational digital libraries: • ACM Digital Library (ACM) • IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (IEEE CS) • IEEE Xplore Digital Library (Xplore) • Websites

8. ACM

9. IEEE CS

10. Xplore

11. Major design characteristics

12. Research Design • 36 participants from Rutgers students community • Included both graduate and undergraduate students • Science, engineering, MLIS students

13. Research Design (2) • Browsing Task: • Xplore: Please browse the proceedings of ITCC: International conference on Information Technology (2004): Coding and Computing, and locate and save two papers about data streaming. • ACM Please browse the proceedings of Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry (SCG) (2004), and locate and save two papers about data streaming. • IEEE Computer Society Please browse the proceedings of ITCC: International conference on Information Technology (2004): Coding and Computing, locate two papers about data streaming, and save their abstracts

14. Research Design (3) • Latin Square design: randomize the order of tasks and systems • Every 3 participants followed the same order • One student dropped

15. User Interaction Measures • The amount of browsing time • The number of browsing steps • The number of user errors related to browsing

16. Results • User characteristics: • Experienced computer users, and very experienced (83%) Web search engine users • Inexperienced users of the three digital libraries in the study: • 66% never used ACM and Xplore • 80% never used IEEE CS. • Strong correlations

17. Comparison of interaction measures *Significant difference was found at p<.01, tested by ANOVA

18. User satisfaction * Significant difference at p < .05, ANOVA test

19. Discussion • Major user problems with IEEE CS design: • No search function provided with browse • Does not meet the user’s expectation of using search as short-cuts. • Unpleasant visual/presentation design • Major user problems with Xplore design: • Proceedings not ordered either on full title or acronym. • Suggestions to improving system designs

20. Further studies • More tasks • Visual/presentation design issues • Experienced users

21. Thank you! Questions?