Letter of Transmittal

Rachael Winterling, Usability Coordinator

J. Murrey Atkins Library
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
Dear Ms. Winterling,
First, our group would like to thank you for visiting our class to discuss the
WorldCat Local library interface with us and giving us ideas on how to test that
interface. We also appreciate your help in allowing us to use Morae with your device. In
our ENGL 4181 class, Associate Professor Dr. Gregory Wickliff assigned us to
investigate the beta version of the WorldCat Local library interface through usability
testing. Our task was to have UNC Charlotte undergraduate students test out the
WorldCat Local interface through completing a number of tasks.
Our results indicate that the undergraduates were able to complete most of the
tasks, but each of them had their individual setbacks. Most of them were able to
navigate through the interface, but there were moments where they ran into problems.
Some of the results include:
Each of the participants could not complete two of the six
tasks given.
There were some participants who gave up immediately, and
others who drove through completing the tasks.
There was also a pattern of undergraduates clicking back to
the search results page, but the interface brought them all the way back to
the beginning.
A user also mistyped a title by one letter, but the results were
way off from the original result.
In response to these results, our group proposes viable solutions that can help
remedy these setbacks and guarantee that the WorldCat Local interface can be
improved for a better experience.
Sincerely,
Joseph Samson, Brooke Johnson & Sabrina Terry
Authors
cc:
Gregory Wickliff, Assoc. Professor of English

Usability Analysis of the Atkins Library

WorldCat Local Interface
By: Brooke Johnson, Joseph Samson & Sabrina Terry
February 23, 2016

Submitted to:
Rachael Winterling, Usability Coordinator
Gregory Wickliff, Assoc. Professor of English

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ... iii

Introduction .. 1
Methodology ...

Participant Performance

Key Findings ...

Conclusions and Recommendations ..

Appendix .. 8
References ..

11

ii

Executive Summary
Our class, ENGL 4181 Writing User Documents, analyzed the WorldCat Local
interface used by UNC Charlottes J. Murrey Atkins Library. To examine WorldCat
Locals interface, our group recruited a total of five undergraduate students from UNCC,

each who were from various majors on campus. By recruiting individuals from different
majors on campus we lessened our chances of having skewed or biased results. We
used the software Morae on a laptop to record each participants experience. Morae
tracked each persons mouse movements, verbal, and nonverbal communication
through the provided webcam and audio recordings. Throughout each participants
usability test we selected two people to act as the observers and one person to facilitate
the testing.
There were a few consistent problems that each participant encountered when
navigating the WorldCat Local interface. All five of our participants did not successfully
complete task number two or six of our task-based questions. Task two involved
locating the Sage Premiere 2016 Resource (Get it! function), and task six involved
determining how many languages a particular book is written in. After examining our
results with Morae, we discovered that certain fonts, images, and icons throughout the
interface seemed too small. The smaller size caused participants to be unsuccessful in
their completion of certain tasks. Also, the misspelling of words in the search field
caused the results to drastically change. Even leaving out just one letter caused
problems amongst our usability tests. Based on our usability tests, our group
iii

recommends enlarging certain text and images on the Librarys site or writing a short
reference guide instructing users how to find resources that are commonly cause
problems.

Introduction

UNC Charlottes J. Murrey Atkins Library introduced the WorldCat Local catalog
for its student and faculty body to use. However, the interface is still in its beta stages,
and many students and faculty have found faults in searching through the interface.
Undergraduate students and professors especially find fault in navigating the beta
interface, which amounted to frustration and confusion in the end. The Atkins library
noticed the flaws and decided to put the interface through a number of trials and tests
for improvement.
So, in collaboration with Associate Professor Dr. Gregory Wickliff and his ENGL
4181/5181 class, Writing User Documents - including us, Sabrina Terry, Joseph Samson
and Brooke Johnson - the Atkins Library introduced usability testing with the beta
version of Atkins WorldCat Local interface. This is for the purpose of testing how usable
the interface is for students and faculty on campus.
Before we conducted the usability testing, Usability Coordinator Rachael
Winterling visited the class to talk about WorldCat Local, its relationship with the Atkin
Library interface, and the number of topics to explore for usability testing. She then
offered to teach us how to use Morae, a video software that captures real time actions
on the computer screen and records the user exploring the website. We asked her
questions about the subject matter and she graciously answered everything we needed
to know about OCLC and WorldCat before starting the tests.
With the help of Rachael Winterling, our group recruited five participants and we
conducted five usability tests, where the participants were assigned six tasks to
complete on the beta WorldCat Local interface and their actions and thoughts were
recorded through the Morae software. All of them were UNC Charlotte undergraduate

students, and each of them were in a separate major. Each of their experiences
involved tasks not being completed, confusion over the navigation on the interface,
complaints about the lack of style on the interface, irrelevant search results, and the
problem with the location of subjects such as availability, floor location, languages, etc.
We report these findings in order to assist Atkins Library and WorldCat Local in
providing viable solutions to resolve the technical problems undergraduates and faculty
run into. After examining through the details of this study, the report can suggest ways
to make the WorldCat Local interface more focused, less confusing, and less
intimidating for the Universitys undergraduate and faculty users.

Methodology
We recruited participants by contacting friends of ours from campus. The
usability tests allowed for us to analyze undergraduate students from various majors,
and to compare and contrast if their major impacted their level of familiarity with the
interface. We used the software Morae to complete the usability tests. Morae allowed us
to record each participants verbal and nonverbal behavior throughout the testing
process.

Participant Performance
Overall the users did a great job, and most users were able to complete four out
of the six task-based questions.
The graph below illustrates how long each user took to complete all the tasks.

Key Findings
1. Get It! Function
With all six of our participants not being able to complete task two, we knew after
the third user something was wrong. We edited the task question after the first
participants performance to make it more clear. Even then, it did not make a difference.
Prior to taking the test the participants were asked pre-test questions and among them
they were asked their overall familiarity with the Atkins Library Catalog, and for the most
part they all answered yes. None of them claimed to be experts of the interface, but that
they would occasionally use it to search for resources pertained to assignments given in
class. With that information given to us ,especially after the first participant, we tried our
best to ease task 2 question, but as stated earlier it didnt make a difference for the
other participants. So the problem we figured was that the libraries catalog doesnt do a
good job of making the user aware of the Get It! function. The link to the Get It! function

doesnt pop out at the user which made it hard to recognize because most users were
just one step away from accomplishing the task if they only knew about the Get It!
resource. The library's catalog also doesnt do a good job of explaining what the
function does. When we did a website search on the libraries catalog to seek
information on exactly what the function does nothing popped up indicating its use.
Video will be posted here!
2. Appearance
Sometimes users would perform multiple tasks before reaching their intended
destination when they didnt have to. For example on task 5 users were asked to find
what floor in the UNC Charlotte library a particular book was located at and try to find
what Date/Edition the UNC Charlotte library holds. Once the user typed the title in the
search bar and the item appeared after the search all the information they needed was
posted right on the link to the book. So the user didnt have to click on the books link to
find all that information. The problem is the the text size is very small on the link to the
book which resulted to the user not being able to recognize all attributes of the book
posted already. Every time a user clicked on the link to a specific item there would be
three item detail tabs such as the following: Description, Edition/Formats, and
Availability / Holdings. Most users would click on the books link and still have a hard
time trying to locate the information related to the task because the three item detail
tabs would not pop out at the user, they had a play symbol next to each tab, but that is
not a good indicator that the tab is a link. Even after figuring out that the tab is a link the
user would have a hard time spotting the information they needed because the text was
to small or the page was cluttered with too much information causing the user to

overlook the information they were looking for. Also when a user would try go back to
the item search page by clicking the back arrow it would redirect the user back to the
beta search interface.This is because the user was suppose to click on the link at the
top right that says close item detail to return back to their item search. The reason
most users werent aware of that was because it is written in very small text and the
page itself was to cluttered making it hard to identify certain things . Sometimes when a
website such as libraries catalog is cluttered or has too many options to do one thing it
can overwhelm the user, so we suggest maybe keeping the website simple so that it
could be easy to navigate through. Also maybe enlarging some of the text to make the
overall appearance better. Video will be posted here!

3. Inconsistency
Probably the most annoying aspect of the libraries catalog is the inconsistency of
some things. For example when participant 4 entered the title of the first task in the
search bar he accidently misspelled one word in the title. This caused search results to
be totally different than the intended search. The book was nowhere to be found and
made the user question us if we gave him the right information to search. Its amazing
how one a misspelling of one letter in the title can mess up the search results to the
point where it cant identify the search at all and list titles that are not even close to the
initial search. Also another interesting factor we found was that when it came to task six
every user had trouble finding how many languages a item can be found in. That is
because the inconsistency with what the description of the item said and what the

language filter section said was available.The description tells the user that the book is
written only in english and when the user clicked on the edition and formats tab it lists
many languages to the point where it is not quantifiable. Video will be posted here!

Conclusions and Recommendations

After the usability tests, the key findings suggested that navigation through the
beta WorldCat Local search function can prove cumbersome and time-consuming,
depending on the tasks being completed. Also, based on the users complaints about
the style, we concluded that the style and the design played a large part in a users
experience in searching for a book, an article, or a subject.
Based on the results of our usability tests we have concluded with a list of
recommendations for improving the Librarys catalog. The Get it! Function icon could be
enlarged, making it easier for users to locate. The size of the text and images could be
changed so that the interface would not be as cluttered and distracting for the user. The
misspelled word search discrepancy would have a disclaimer, warning users that there
was a large possibility that misspelling their search keywords can produce irrelevant
and offkey results. In the meanwhile, this error can be fixed by adjusting which
keywords determines what shows up based on title, author, and relevancy rather than
going off from the keywords themselves.

Appendix
Participant #1
Biology Major

Participant #2
Computer
Science Major

Task

Duration
(Total: 12
minutes, 50
second)

Success

Summary

Item
Description

1 minute, 25
seconds

Yes

Was unsure if they found

the correct book

Get It!
Resource

4 minutes

No

The link did not work

E-book
Version

1 minute, 30
seconds

Yes

The book is not available

at UNCC

Online Article 1 minute

Yes

Used the left-pane to click

the article

Books
Location

1 minute, 25
seconds

Yes

Easily completed task

Languages

3 minutes, 30 No
seconds

Difficult to locate

Item
Description

45 seconds

Yes

Clicked on the
description to find the
ISBN.

Get It!
Resource

2 minutes,
15 seconds

No

They were not sure

what the Sage Premier
2016 resource was

Participant #3
Art/Comm
Studies Major

Participant #4
Computer
Science Major

E-book
Version

1 minute,
20 seconds

Yes

Task #4 helped him to

complete this task

Online
Article

1 minute,
50 seconds

Yes

Used a filter to search

for articles

Books
Location

2 minutes,
5 seconds

Yes

Clicked on availability to
find the location and
edition

Languages

3 minutes

No

Language options were

not clear

Item
Description

1 minute,
35 seconds

Yes

No problem finding the

ISBN #

Get It!
Resource

2 minutes,
10 seconds

No

Was not able to

complete

E-book
Version

1 minute,
15 seconds

Yes

No trouble finding
issue

Online
Article

50 seconds

Yes

Used filter section

Books
Location

1 minute,
30 seconds

Yes

Used the description

tab to find item info

Languages

1 minute,
15 seconds

No

Was not able to find

exact number of
languages

Item
Description

3 minutes,
45 seconds

No

Get It!
Resource

1 minute,
50 seconds

Yes

Participant #5
English Major

E-book
Version

1 minute,
30 seconds

Yes

Online
Article

1 minute,
50 seconds

Yes

Books
Location

4 minutes,
5 seconds

Yes

Languages

1 minute, 5
seconds

No

Item
Description

40 seconds

Yes

Get It!
Resource

1 minute,
40 seconds

No

E-book
Version

55 seconds

Yes

Online
Article

45 seconds

No

Books
Location

2 minutes,
45 seconds

Yes

Languages

45 seconds

No

References
Usability Test Participants:
Biology Major, UNC Charlotte, 2/2/2016
Computer Science Major, UNC Charlotte,
Art / Communication Studies Major, UNC Charlotte,
Computer Science Major, UNC Charlotte,

English Major, UNC Charlotte,

Supporting Documents:
Goodman, Elizabeth, Mike Kuniavsky, and Andrea Moed. Observing the User
Experience. 2nd ed. Waltham: Elsevier, 2012. Print.
Morae. Computer software. Morae. TechSmith, Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
"Search UNC Charlotte Libraries and Beyond." Search Uncc.on.worldcat.org. WorldCat,
Web. 20 Feb. 2016.