Usability Testing Your Circulation FAQ

Access Services ConferenceNovember 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 EmergencyCan’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

• 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: GoalsGeneral rule of usability testing is to make sure that you’re testing things that are actionable, so your results can be applied.

• 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: Writing the test

Usability testing: Conducting the test

• 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

"It takes only five users to uncover 80 percent of high-level usability problems." - Jakob Nielsen

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

before

Result: Redesign Circ. FAQ home page content as a gateway to the FAQ as a whole

Renamed “Home” tab

Made new boxes for most-requested content

after

before

Result: Consolidate content of pages– they are too long with too much text

When users got to the bottom of pages, they lost their place.

Made Q&A pairs collapsible. Answer appears only when users click on questions

after

Result: Make circulation@mit.edu 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.

afterContact information is at the top of the page and points users to our circulation email address.

before

after

Result: Link color blends with regular text – make color brighter

old link

new link

Result: All testers preferred request over order within the context of getting library materials

Result: Eliminate separate Borrowing + Ordering page

All the info is inthe 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:cassfox@mit.edufeiden@mit.edu

MIT’s Circulation FAQ:http://libguides.mit.edu/circ