Overview

Goals

• Formulating research based recommendations concerning Purdue Libraries Website Search Function’s usability
• Make sure that users can easily find the information they need

Key Terms

Facets: The filters that appear after the initial search to allow users to specify and narrow down their results

User Group

Undergraduate Purdue students

Sponsors

Dean Lingley, Alison Davis

My Role

• Sponsor Communication
• Interviews
• Workshop Facilitation

What do Undergraduate Users Think About Purdue Libraries’ Search?

Current State Testing

• Conducted testing with 6 undergraduate students

  • Various levels of experience with the website
  • Different fields of study so that we could

• Tasks:

  • Using the search function
  • Using facets to include specific results
  • Using facets to exclude specific results

Relevant Findings

• Participants had issues with the sidebar and facets
  • The hierarchy of the facets confused participants
    • Most noted “Citation Source” as less relevant than “Publication Date”
  • Had difficulty finding the “exclude” button

“Show Only” facet

Hovering over “Show Only” shows the exclude button

Facet hierarchy example

What Features do Users Expect to See?

Prioritization Workshop

Impact-Effort Matrix

The prioritization workshop’s purpose was to work together with our sponsors to assess which of the pain points we discovered in milestone 1 should be prioritized.

• We used an Impact-Effort matrix with Effort on the X-axis and Impact on the Y-axis

Findings

• Reorganizing the Facets would be the most effective use of our time

Discovery Interviews & Workshop

We conducted interviews with 6 Purdue undergraduate students, (4 experienced, 2 inexperienced) so we could understand what our users expect from the current facet system, and how we could change different aspects of the facets to fit those expectations

• We conduced a card sort activity, our participants ranked the facets on Purdue Libraries’ website from most to least
• We had our participants compare Purdue libraries’ PrimoVE facets to other institution’s PrimoVE facets

Findings

• Facets are a source of confusion and frustration for users
  • Terminology causes confusion
  • Some facets were considered unnecessary
• Participants liked Vanderbilt’s facet hierarchy the most