Website Usability UX Study (2015)

In March and April 2015, the UX team investigated how students navigated the newly redesigned library’s website.

Research Questions

• Are students able to find the information they need on the library website?

Methods

• Usability test with 11 students (10 undergraduates and 1 graduate student)

What did we Learn?

• Locating a database was the most time-consuming task 
• In general, it took students less time to complete tasks on the newly designed website compared to the previous version
• The easiest tasks for students were finding library hours, course reserves and journal articles
• Students did not associate the term Library Guides with Course Guides
• Ask Us was not commonly understood as an online chat feature

Our Recommendations

• Implement a solution which allow users to search the library website 
• Identify the most important library resources and add those links to the homepage 
• Add Web of Science (and other databases) to Primo
• Add an Ask Us link under the Research Assistance sub-menu item 
• Improve the visibility of Library Guides