Usability Testing Your
Circulation FAQ
Access Services Conference
November 10, 2011
Melissa Feiden, Annex Services and User Experience Librarian
Cassandra Fox, Information Services Librarian
In the Beginning…
Circulation FAQ ca. 2001- Feb. 2009
•HTML page with embedded
table
•Limited number of staff who
could update content
•Information often out of
date
How Many Clicks Does It Take…
To get to the end of an FAQ?
•12
•Questions anchored to answers
•Q & A pair not always intuitive
•Questions might link to answers
on other webpages
In case of Emergency
Can’t find the FAQ? Seek alternate route:
•2nd way to discover the same
information
•Employed both “plain
language” descriptions and
Libraries’ name branding
•Equally hard to navigate
MIT, Meet LibGuides
• First LibGuides created summer 2008
• Only used for discipline specific
subject guides
• Flexible interface to create web based
pages without knowledge of HTML
• Staff ability to add and edit content
greatly expanded
• Wrote proposal to expand use of
LibGuides to FAQs
Forging Ahead
• New FAQ created
• Gradually learned that navigation, while
improved, was still not intuitive to staff or
users
• Library terms remained an issue for users
• 2 Years later… back to the drawing board
Developing the
Usability Test
Usability testing: Goals
General rule of usability testing is to make
sure that you’re testing things that are
actionable, so your results can be applied.
•Navigation – can users find the
information they need?
•Organization of content – is
information grouped intuitively?
•Language – do users understand all of
the language we use?
•Audience – who are we trying to
reach?
Usability testing: Writing the test
•Conduct a task-based test with observation
(instead of a focus group or diary study, etc.)
•Held a brainstorming session to compile
lists of problem points we knew about.
•Team members took a section of the site
that we wanted to test, then wrote task
questions.
•Narrowed the questions to the essentials
that we wanted to ask, keeping the test
length within an hour.
•Result: Combination of task-based and
open-ended questions.
Usability testing: Conducting the test
"It takes only five users to uncover 80 percent of high-level
usability problems." - Jakob Nielsen
•We tested 9 people: 5 staff and 4 students
•We “tested the test” before conducting it.
•We recruited volunteers from library staff and
student employees. Chose people who weren’t
overly familiar with the sites, so that we could
test the navigation.
•We conducted the test with 2 observers and 1
test taker. One observer read test questions as
written, while other observer took notes.
•Ask the test taker to speak out loud about
their process, why they’re making the choices
they’re making
Usability results
and
changes to the
website
Result: Re-label tabs or
break tabs into separate sections
before
after
“Your Account” is now a
sub-section of “Request +
Borrow”
Result: Remove Course
Reserves information
before
after
Result: Redesign Circ. FAQ home page
content as a gateway to the FAQ as a whole
before
after
Renamed
“Home” tab
Made new
boxes for
mostrequested
content
Result: Consolidate content of pages–
they are too long with too much text
before
When users got to
the bottom of pages,
they lost their place.
after
Made Q&A
pairs
collapsible.
Answer
appears only
when users
click on
questions
Result: Make [email protected] the primary
contact for circulation-related questions
before
Contact info was
“below the fold”
and pointed to
Ask Us! service.
Questions not
always routed to
appropriate staff.
after
Contact information is at the top of
the page and points users to
our circulation email address.
Result: Link color blends with regular
text – make color brighter
old link
before
new link
after
Result: All testers preferred request over order
within the context of getting library materials
Result: Eliminate separate Borrowing +
Ordering page
All the info is in
the new FAQ
Lessons Learned
• It can take time to prove your point
• Set a clear scope and timeline for your project. Revisit as
the project progresses to ensure you are on track
• Everyone thinks they’re a stakeholder
– Feedback is good, but it needs to be focused
– Asking for continuous feedback along the way slows
progress. Use departmental liaisons, surveys or
brown bags instead
• Librarians speak their own language. No one else
understands us
Lessons Learned
• Broad audience
– Our communities include people from
17-85 and none of them are the same
– That audience includes library staff who
help users find information every day
– You can’t please everyone. Find a middle
ground when considering which usability
results to implement
• Small incentives make a big difference
Usability resource that we like
University of Texas at Austin web
publishing site
www.utexas.edu/learn/usability
Questions?
Contact Us:
[email protected]
[email protected]
MIT’s Circulation FAQ:
http://libguides.mit.edu/circ