search interface based upon a libraries Open Public Access
Catalogue
Markus Burstr¨om and Mikael Zingmark
April 29, 2011
Master’s Thesis in Computing Science, 30 credits Supervisor at CS-UmU: H˚ akan Gulliksson
Examiner: Per Lindstr¨om
Ume˚ a University
Department of Computing Science SE-901 87 UME˚ A
SWEDEN
Today many libraries offer their services via Internet and reach billions of visitors in different ages. The problem is that most of these library web sites are not customized for the users and they don’t deliver a good user experience. In this thesis we have studied both the interface and the users of an Open Public Access Catalog called CS Library. We found out how the users use the current system and how they want to use it. To achieve this we gathered data with different user studies at the Ume˚a city library. A new interface was developed from the outcome of our user study. We created a set of guidelines that were followed when a new user customized design was developed for CS Library. The new design offers a better user experience and is customized by the users needs, desires and thoughts. The new design has been implemented as an interactive prototype with HTML, CSS, Javascript and Actionscript to convey a better feeling of the interface.
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Problem Description . . . 2
1.2 Goals . . . 3
1.3 Methods . . . 3
1.4 Literature Study and Related work . . . 4
1.5 Thesis outline . . . 5
2 How to adapt Online Public Access Catalogues for Web 3.0 7 2.1 Introduction . . . 7
2.2 What is Web 3.0? . . . 8
2.3 How to adapt OPAC’s for Web 3.0 . . . 11
2.4 Summary and discussion . . . 12
3 How to design a user customized smart phone application for an Open Public Access Catalogue 13 3.1 Introduction . . . 13
3.2 Designing the application . . . 14
3.3 Summary and discussion . . . 24
4 User Study 25 4.1 Methods . . . 25
4.2 Interview - borrowers . . . 26
4.3 Interview - librarians . . . 28
4.4 Conclusion of user study . . . 28
5 Interface design and implementation 33 5.1 Methods . . . 33
5.2 Guidelines . . . 34
5.3 Elaboration of different interface concepts . . . 35
5.4 Implementation of interface . . . 54
6 Results 57
iii
7 Discussion and Conclusions 63 7.1 Future work . . . 64 7.2 Reflections . . . 65
8 Acknowledgements 67
References 69
A Questions, answers and conclusions - borrowers 73
B Questions, answers and conclusions - librarians 83
C Interview survey for borrowers 85
D Web survey for borrowers 87
E In-depth interview with librarians 91
F Web survey for librarians 93
1.1 A GANTT-schedule over the work process. . . 3
2.1 Screenshot of Headwebs way of showing ”Similar movies”. . . 10
2.2 This is the way last.fm presents ”Similar artists” on their web site. . . 10
3.1 The different sources of inspiration. . . 15
3.2 Different stages in Android’s interface for the HTC Desire phone. . . 15
3.3 Sketches showing different stages for the application. First pictures shows the layout for the first page. The second is showing the list of options when entering the section called ”My pages”. The third picture is showing ”My loans”entered from ”My pages”. The last picture to the right is showing a full post of a selected item. . . 16
3.4 Two different design proposals of the first page. What differentiates them is that the first proposal does only have a link to the search function which gives a really clean impression. In the second proposal the search function is placed at the top of the page which is more similar to the web site. . . 18
3.5 By placing ”Renew your loan”first I follow the Android guideline ”Place the most frequently used operations first”[1]. . . 19
3.6 ”My pages”and ”My loans” . . . 20
3.7 The ”Search result”page where the first item has been expanded . . . 21
3.8 The search result in ”Norrk¨opings application” . . . 22
3.9 Fullpost of an item . . . 23
4.1 A screenshot of Minabiblioteks first page . . . 25
4.2 The final logo of the link to our web survey. . . 27
4.3 The negative comments we received divided into three different categories. . . 30
5.1 An image board that inspired us during the sketch phase. . . 36
5.2 The first page was divided in to different sections. . . 37
5.3 A first sketch is showing a simple layout of the structure for the first proposal we decided to develop further. . . 38
v
5.4 The second proposal is showing a simple sketch of the structure where the different sections of the page has been attached. This is the second proposal
we decided to develop further. . . 39
5.5 The 26 medieicons that are used in the system. It can be hard to understand the meaning of each icon without any text labels. . . 40
5.6 Mockup of the first page, design proposal one . . . 41
5.7 Mockup of the search page, design proposal one . . . 42
5.8 Mockup of the full post, design proposal one . . . 43
5.9 First digital design proposal based on sketch 2 . . . 44
5.10 Mockup of the first page. . . 46
5.11 The figure shows the rearrangement of the different sections for the search result. . . 47
5.12 This figures shows the rearrangement of the different sections for the search result. . . 48
5.13 Mockup of the search result. . . 49
5.14 Mockup of the fullpost. . . 50
5.15 Mockup of the tag of the book. . . 51
5.16 Mockup of the Profile search. . . 52
5.17 Current layout for reserving a work . . . 53
5.18 First the user must choose which item he or she wants to borrow. . . 53
5.19 As soon as the user choose an item it appears down in the flowchart, type and library, and the process moves on to step two where the user has to choose where to pick up the reserved item. The orange color is showing the user where in the process he/she is. . . 54
5.20 When the location has been chosen the last step remains where the user only needs to confirm the reservation of the item. . . 54
5.21 As soon as the user clicks to confirm the reservation a big notification appears saying that ”Your item has now been reserved”. It is easy to follow and during the process you are being notified about which type of media you are reserving, preventing users from being reserving the wrong type. . . 54
6.1 Screenshot of the implemented first page . . . 57
6.2 Screenshot of the implemented search page . . . 58
6.3 Screenshot of the implemented full post . . . 59
6.4 Here is a screenshot of the implemented page. This screenshot shows how we rearranged information on the first page. You can see the current version of minabibliotek in Figure 5.2 . . . 60
A.1 This shows the result of which properties the borrowers think is important when their search result is sorted . . . 79
A.2 This figure shows a visual result of how the users marked the first page. Size and opacity reflect how many users that have been marking a certain area. . 81
vii
Introduction
This is a Master’s Thesis in Computing Science within the field of Interaction design at Ume˚a University which was done together with Teknikhuset AB. Teknikhuset is a Swedish company located in Ume˚a and Stockholm and they invent and develop software solutions for companies and organizations with the user in focus, making information and technology available for everyone. Typically their customers are private companies, authorities and counties. They have costumers all over Sweden and some of them are Handelsbanken, Sven- ska Kyrkan, Brottsoffermyndigheten and Riksarkivet. Apart from the customer specified software they also develop two products of their own. The first one is a Content Manage- ment System called Content Studio and the second is the Library 2.0 solution called CS Library which this thesis will focus on[43].
”CS Library is the only independent standard Library 2.0 solution in the world - developed in Sweden. CS Library integrates any ILS in any combination on one website.” [27]
The task that was assigned by Teknikhuset had a main focus on evaluating their CS Library product from a user perspective. We thought that it was very interesting to do this project together with Teknikhuset which is a leading company within their field of library solutions. At the same time as this was a new interesting field for us the project was also interaction design oriented. The project contains a user study which focused on how the users used the system and how they would like to use it. When we are talking about users in this report we are referring to borrowers and librarians. Teknikhusets wanted a user study to lean back on when building the next version of CS Library. Teknikhuset also wanted us to design a new layout which met the demands and desires from the users that appeared in the user study.
Since there are so many libraries world wide still using outdated systems the sector of use for a product like CS Library is huge and therefore our thesis may be very useful when the library market is evolving.
Background
Not many years ago every library used paper based catalogs for finding books, but when the computers made it to the market the libraries started to get digitalized. Suddenly you were able to search through the library catalog in seconds to find a certain book (or any other item that could be borrowed) and to make all these items public for computer- and web
1
search, something called OPAC was created. OPAC stands for Online Public Access Catalog and it is a user interface which purpose is to make it easier to receive library information.
The OPAC helps the user to search, borrow and reserve books, just a few examples. The appearance of the OPAC on the screen differs a lot depending on what company that delivers the solution.
LIBRA.SE and BOOK-IT were among the first library systems in Sweden with a user interface where the borrower had the opportunity to search in the library catalog. LIBRA.SE and BOOK-IT are developed by Axiell Libra AB which also have their own improved OPAC solution called Axiell Arena[6].
To simplify the interchange of catalog posts between libraries world wide the MAchine Readable Cataloging standard MARC 21 was developed. It allows for standardized man- agement at any library such as special libraries at companies, collages, universities etc. The Marc format consists of many fields/posts where every field is described by a three digit code. The code tells what kind of information there is in the field[30].
CS library by Teknikhuset is the only independent standard product for Library 2.0 and has been developed in relationship with Swedish libraries since 2005. Library 2.0 means that it is in a constant and purposeful change that empowers the library users to participate in improving the library services[13].
CS library is based on four ”core values”; Openness, Freedom of Choice, Coopera- tion/Collaboration and Availability/Accessibility. It can be integrated with any catalog systems (ILS) and services at any time in one webpage. ”CS Library is one of the market leaders in Sweden”, something that Niclas ˚Astr¨om, Chief Technical Officer at Teknikhuset AB in Ume˚a, is proud to tell us. CS Library is a so called independent OPAC and can there- fore be connected/run together with several library systems such as ”Micromark”, ”Origo”, but also with library systems like BOOK-IT and LIBRA.SE.
CS Library contains everything needed to present a library on the web, to make all the services visible and inspire the visitors. Examples are articles, tips, opening hours, contact information, RSS, news, arrangements, presentation of the employes, library sites, information sites and a lot more. Everything is ”wrapped up in a nice package” according to Niclas ˚Astr¨om.
There is a big difference in the screen layouts of different OPAC’s. Some of them feel outdated and are not user friendly at all and then there are more modern layouts like CS Library. The question is whether it ever will be possible to create an perfect user experience for a library system where the user is able to search, read and receive news, information about events, tips and etc.
1.1 Problem Description
The problem with Teknikhusets product CS Library is that it is mostly designed by specifi- cations made by the librarians and not by the borrowers who represents the majority of the users in the system. When the system is redesigned or new functions are to be implemented only the librarians views are taken in consideration. The borrowers has never been asked what their thoughts are about the system.
Teknikhuset wants CS library to be a user-adapted system and work for both the bor- rowers and the librarians. They want us in this Master’s Thesis to make a user study so that they have some sort of reasoning, a report, that supports their arguments when telling the clients that ”this is the way the users actually wants the system to work or be designed”.
The arguments and wishes do vary a lot between different librarians from different libraries,
who have specified the system. Instead of focusing on big problems, like user experience or security they are typically focusing on really small details.
What we want to do is understand how the users wish to search in the library system and how they experience the website layout and functions. We will divide the target group in to two groups, librarians and borrowers. What does each group think is relevant and what do they expect of the system? To obtain information about the user’s behavior and the desired functionality we will make a user study. We will also create new guidelines and combine them with already existing guidelines for OPACs and use them to propose a design for CS library.
1.2 Goals
The goal of this master thesis is to evaluate the usability of CS Library through a user study to understand how the user groups (librarians and borrowers) experience the system.
From the information that we gather we will create new guidelines and design a new user- friendly interface for CS library. To achieve this, the following three sub-goals were decided on together with Teknikhuset:
1. How do the users use the current system?
2. How do they want to use it, expectations and desires?
3. How to design and implement a prototype that visualize a user-friendly library system?
1.3 Methods
The first thing we made in this project was to create a GANT-schedule that would approx- imate the amount of time we have to spend on each section in this project.
Figure 1.1: A GANTT-schedule over the work process.
Because we have used the design-process we selected in some smaller projects it felt natural for us to use it. But, we adapted the design-process to fit our project. These are the four main components of the design process that we have been using in the project:
– Pre-study/Research - We started the whole project by looking at related works to get an understanding of common problems with OPACs today, from a users perspec- tive.
– Interview - To understand how the two targets groups (librarians and borrowers) use the system today and want to use the system we made interviews and surveys with the two groups separately. Read more about this in chapter 4.
– Design - We started to create a number of guidelines so that we had a reference frame for design. After that we sketched new interface-layouts with pen and paper and finally we transformed the sketches into digital formats. Read more about this in chapter 5.
– Implementation - The implementation was made with the computer languages HTML, CSS/CSS3 and javascript. Read more about this in chapter 5.
1.4 Literature Study and Related work
We started our project by making a literature study to gather information and to achieve a general knowledge of this area. We wanted to study related work to establish what the problem(s) they found and how they tackled the problem(s). We also wanted to know how they collected their data to see what types of questions they had been using. We read arti- cles to gather information, not only about OPACs but also on how to make good interviews and what we should think about when designing a new interface[44].
From the literature study we have found that there are some related works on Online Publish Access Catalogs. Most of the studies that we have found have their main focus on why it is so hard to use OPACs and that they are not standardized. Borgman has written two articles, ”Why are catalogs hard to use?”[11], ”Why are online catalogs still hard to use?”[12], about ”Why it is so hard to use OPACs”. She claims that the library catalogs are not designed for the borrower but rather fur the librarians. These articles from Borgman are old and maybe not that relevant at the present time but there are also studies from this millennium that show weaknesses in the OPACs interface. Bates[7] gives an general information about searching and then explains what kinds of problem users have when using an OPAC. Bates[7] and Lindgren[28] have created guidelines and recommendations about what others should think about when they design an new user-interface for an OPAC.
We also found that there is a federation called, The International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA). It is a global international, non-governmental, repre- sentation of the library and information profession. IFLA’s aims it to represent their mem- ber’s interests all over the world, advocate high standards for delivery of library and infor- mation services and give a widespread understanding of the good value libraries leads to[22].
IFLA has written the Guidelines for Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) Display[23], a recommendation about what an OPAC-interface should contain. We will present a number of these guidelines in chapter 5 where we also will presents our own guidelines.
We have also been studying the MARC21 standard, MAchine Readable Cataloging, to get an understanding of how the underlying structure for library works are in the library system database.
In the end of the literature study we read more about web usability concerning the layout of OPACs but also some more general guidelines for web usability. Articles like ”How to
Design Library Websites to Maximize Usability”[24], ”Search User Interfaces”[19] and also general usability guidelines for the web by Jakob Nielsen[34].
1.5 Thesis outline
This section will give an overview of the structure and a brief description of each chapter in this master thesis.
Chapter 2 - How to adapt Online Public Access Catalogues for Web 3.0 This chapter is an in-depth study about how the OPAC’s could be changed and improved to suit the new Web 3.0 in the future. The study will present some of the directions Web 3.0 may take and how to apply them on todays OPAC’s.
Chapter 3 - How to design a user customized smart phone application for an Open Public Access Catalogue
This chapter is an in-depth study about how a smartphone application could be designed to satisfy the users of an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC).
Chapter 4 - User Study
In this chapter the user study will be presented, how the study was made and it’s outcome. We will group the test material and make conclusions of what the user wants from an OPAC.
Chapter 5 - Interface design and Implementation
Here we will go through the process of designing a new interface. This chapter will present our own new guidelines and also explain how we worked from sketches to the finished prototype. We will discuss why we chose some layouts and functionality fur further development.
Chapter 6 - Results
In this chapter the final result will be presented with screenshots and descriptions of different functions and layouts.
Chapter 7 - Discussion and Conclusions
In this final chapter we will discuss if we fulfilled the goals for this master thesis and also talk about restrictions, limitations and our thoughts about future work in this area.
How to adapt Online Public Access Catalogues for Web 3.0
This chapter is an in-depth study about how the Online Public Access Catalogues (OPAC) could be designed to suit the Web 3.0 framework. The study will present a background history to give the reader a better understanding of how the web has evolved over time and what new features the Web 3.0 will bring. It will also explain what developers should consider when developing new interfaces and features for OPAC’s now when the Internet is gradually evolving into Web 3.0, the extended web.
2.1 Introduction
Today the web goes under the name ”Web 2.0”. This concept began with a conference brainstormie between Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive International[37]. This was the start for the ”new web” that today is filled with user customized web pages and social web sites, where the users not only are consumers but also are contributing to a more ”alive” web.
There are many developers that think the web is on its way to a new era, the Web 3.0.
A web where the users will be connected to Internet 24/7 through their computers, smart phones, cars etc. Conrad Wolfram says this about the new Internet era
”I think we’re now getting to an era where that real-time content generation can not only be directly from humans, but from where the computer is producing new results in real
time, responding to a question. ”[26].
There is no one that knows what the Web 3.0 will bring to life, but that doesn’t really stop the users from reflecting on and analyzing what the Web 3.0 will be all about. Typically this concerns the semantic web, increased use of artificial intelligence, the 3D-web and a more portable personal web.
Because the product CS Library is a Library 2.0 solution[43] that is using the most characteristics features from the Web 2.0 it needs to adapt when the Web evolves into Web 3.0. This study will give some thoughts, reflections and suggestions that can be considered when adapting a library OPAC from today into the new Web 3.0.
7
Background
To get an understanding about how tomorrows OPAC’s could be adapted for the new upcoming Web 3.0 it is useful to have a basic knowledge about the Internet history. This background section will explain the main components in each era of the Internet.
For the normal Internet user the first Internet era started with the Web 1.0 1991[14].
It was a web where few users contributed with new things and features. Most of the users were only surfing the web ”read only”. The Internet only consisted of static web sites with no interactivity and you could say that the web was a ”closed web”. Companies did not let users take part of the development like today where there are a lot of open source programs and API’s[41].
According to Tim O’Reilly, one of the founders for the Web 2.0, the main change between the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 was that the visitors, not the creator of the site, will control information and data on the site. He also means that Web 2.0 is about delivering a service and not being stuck with a program that only can be used on one platform[37].
Today it is hard to distinguish a Web 2.0 web site from a first era web site. That is be- cause many sites have been adapted and redesigned to suit today’s web. But, like Cormode and Krishnamurthy mean there is a clear separation between the popular sites today like Facebook and Youtube and the web sites from the early web. The differences are technical features, structural and sociological[15].
There are some important features that can tell if a site are adapted to Web 2.0 according to Cormode and Krishnamurthy;
– The users themselves should be involved and contribute to the site content, e.g be able to create a profile and have the possibility to post content such as photos, videos, comments and tagging content on the site.
– Opportunity to communicate with friends and/or subscribe to RSS feeds.
– The users should experience the sites with a better usability that give the user control over his/her information and data on the site.
– The site should offer new technical features for richer applications through e.g a pub- lic API to allow ”mash-ups”, embedding flash objects such movies, using AJAX for dynamical updating without reloading the whole page.
2.2 What is Web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is the new, the open, the extended and advanced web. In Web 3.0 the individual will experience a new era on the Internet. The way you will interact and how the information data is structured will change. Search engines will be able to understand who you are, what you have done and what you want to do[42]. It is difficult to predict exactly which direction Web 3.0 will take in the future, but the reasoning about it is that it will contain the semantic web, increased use of intelligent search, be a 3D-web and that the web will be with us all the time.
In a near future the Internet will contain so much information that it will be more or less impossible to search through it yourself. The new web will therefore be about filtering your search[48]. This section will give an explanation of what some researchers think Web 3.0 will be about and that I think will improve OPAC’s in the future.
The semantic web
The semantic web is a concept that is developed by a collaborative project led by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) together with some different researchers and industrial partners[45]. W3C writes this on their web site about the semantic web, the Web of data;
”The ultimate goal of the Web of data is to enable computers to do more useful work and to develop systems that can support trusted interactions over the network.”[45].
What this means is that W3C is focusing on creating a common framework that will allow machines to read and understand the information on the Web. That will make autonomous agents and other web applications or softwares that in intelligent ways search for information and are able to share it to other agents, web sites or applications[45].
One example is that you could ask your agent to match your schedule with your friends schedule to reserve seats in the cinema when they are showing a comedy. This is something the agent could do by itself knowing your movie preferences and your and your friend’s schedule.
It will required that the information data on the web is tagged according to the standards that W3C are developing. This could lead to that users spend less time to search for information and more time to use, understand and read the information. There are already companies spending a lot of time to develop smarter and more intelligent search engines with the semantic web in mind[29].
The 3D-web
The 3D-web has been speculated about for some time. Second life and different games like World of Warcraft can be explanations to why researcher think this would be a part of Web 3.0. There are many thoughts about what the 3D-web could be. For example you can go house hunting in a 3D-virtual representation of any city in the world or take a virtual tour in whatever country you want to see how that country looks like. Maybe you want to take a real world holiday in that country later. You will also be able to interact with other people in 3D[31]. But, the main purpose is that the user can search through the web information in a 3D environment.
Google has their Google Street View where they have photographs from North Amer- ica, Europe, Australia, Japan and some other parts of the world. Google have a goal to photograph the whole world[18]. But this is ”only” pictures of the real world and not an interactive environment like a 3D-virtual world could be. In such a world you can walk around with an avatar and interact with other users. With the new HTML5 the possibility to create 3D-web directly in your web browsers, instead of downloading external software, makes it more likely that this can be a part of the new Web.
The mediacentric web
The mediacentric web is another direction of what the new web could bring to life. Cade Metz talks about this in 2007 where he thinks that in the future we will search for information in a different way. That we will use media for searching for other media. This way of searching means that we don’t need to use keywords when searching. We can instead search for a song with a song and for a book with a book[31].
This is something that more or less exist today, were sites contain ”similar songs” or
”similar movies”. The Figure 2.1 shows how a Swedish movie site Headweb shows ”similar movies”, in this case the Hooligans. I have highlighted the ”similar” function so that it will be easier to recognized.
Figure 2.1: Screenshot of Headwebs way of showing ”Similar movies”.
There exist a lot of examples that have this function and one is the music site last.fm.
They present ”similar artist” like the Figure 2.2 shows.
Figure 2.2: This is the way last.fm presents ”Similar artists” on their web site.
This types of functionality is mostly based on that users need to tag, i.e contribute with keywords for each item. This can in some cases be misleading if someone for example writes the wrong keyword for a song or artist. This function will be discussed further in the next chapter of how it could be improved and adapt to suit the Web 3.0 OPAC.
The ever present web
All facts about Web 3.0 indicate that the web will be everywhere in the future e.g in your computer, smart phone, clothes, car etc. We will have more processor power in our pocket devices than we have had in our lifetime combined[47]. The Internet will be in center for us in the future, both at work as an information source and at our homes where the Internet will be our entertainment system[36]. This will make it easier to receive and search information, or rather it feels like you don’t need to search for information because you will always have the right information with you.
Today this development has already starting with our smart phones that have a number of applications which let real world information communicate with the Internet. Smart
phones are equipped with RFID and barcode readers that let the smart phones scanning real world information to share or communicate the data with other devices on the Internet.
Another approach that smart portable devices make possible is augmented reality (AR).
AR helps the users to receive more information, then the eye can see for itself, in the real world. The main thing with AR is that the users are able to see the real world with virtual objects projected on the screen of your smart device[32]. Today AR exists in our smart phone, with the right application, but in the future there is a possibility that this is implemented in your glasses or maybe even directly on your retina.
2.3 How to adapt OPAC’s for Web 3.0
Now the Web 3.0 will be applied on OPAC’s to explore which features that could bring OPAC’s to a new and better standard. This section will contain my own thoughts but also ides that was found in the literature review.
First of all it is important that the ”new OPAC” becomes more social but still focus on the individuals. This requires that the users have the opportunity to create their own user profile on the site. The OPAC’s I have looked at in Sweden offer that opportunity, you need it to make new loans etc. But what I haven’t found is the possibility to make connections to other users on the site and look at their ”list of loans” etc. That could be one way to make the OPAC more social. Already Web 2.0 is about making sites more social but I have highlighted this because i really don’t think that the OPAC’s have reached to that point yet.
The next thing is that OPAC’s need to bring several types of databases and information on the Internet together, one of the keystones of the semantic web[45]. This will make it easier for the user to find information, data, books etc on the library web site.
In the near future the libraries would need to change the services to suit the users. They need to change the way they offer the visitors/users items. Their can’t only be analog items on the market, it has to be more digital items e.g e-books and e-journals articles. This is because the Internet will be with us all of the time, the ever-present web. The change must be done with the users in focus and such that they experience it as easy and fast to make new loans over the Internet[8].
I write above that the focus of the ”new OPAC” should be on the individuals and it is here the Web 3.0, the semantic web, will make a difference. When users have created their own semantic profile the system will be able to know which user that is searching and understand what the user is interested in. The system can, from the profile information and together with the search query, give matching results or even related matching results when a search is made[10]. The semantic web allows the OPAC to have the possibility to give suggestions on how the user quickly, suiting the user’s schedule, can get to the library, with e.g public transportations. But this requires that the user shares his/her schedule with the autonomous agent so that it can handle and is allowed to share that information to other applications on the Internet.
Something that quickly can be establish is that future searches on the Internet can be made in a more intelligent way. In the library world this can be made by using media to search for media, i.e using the mediacentric web[31]. This could be developed further with the opportunity to specify a couple of books, that you think are good books, and based on that information get matching results which the system think you would like. One idea is that the system can read the book that you have specified so that it knows and understands the meaning of it, like the semantic web will be able to read and understand information
of web pages. Based on that knowledge the system can suggest matching results to your search. This is something that would need for more intelligent search methods and not like today were you get proposals like ”similar books” only based on keyword and subjects.
Another suggestion from the semantic web and the 3D-web is to implement a virtual librarian. You would be able to ask the virtual librarians for book tips and by reasoning with the librarian it can come up with items that you may like. The virtual librarian could also answer to questions like ”Give me a good book about ... that contains ...” as a human librarian has the knowledge to do. With smart searches and more information about the user the virtual librarian could, by reasoning and analyzing books in the database, present matching results.
To bring the virtual librarian to an even higher level the whole library could be presented in a 3D environment. This could mean that you step into a virtual library world where you can walk around with your avatar and check out new books or interact with other humans.
It can be more or less like Second life.
Other technical features that come with our smart phones or tablets are useful in the library world. One opportunity is to use the barcode reader on your smart phone to scan a book or any other item in the real world library. This information that you have collected will then communicate with the library database and present information about that item directly on your portable device. This is something that also could be done with augmented reality. Say that you stand in front of a book shelf in the library and find a book that you think looks interesting. You take up your smart phone and start the library application, point the camera on the book and directly you will get more information about the book than the summary on the backside says. You could receive comments, gradings and see if any of your friends recommend this book. This also opens up the opportunity to lend the book directly with your device or lend and download it as an e-book.
The fact that the web will be with us all of the time means that the library must adapt to the new technical features, e.g applications to smart phones and tablets and provide a larger amount of digital items like mentioned before.
2.4 Summary and discussion
Research about how the OPAC’s can be improved in the future and adapted to the new web is something that benefits the libraries but also the visitors. In the case of Internet, the users must always be in focus. There are users that accept the changes and constantly push the developers to come up with new and better solutions. For example, where would Web 2.0 be without the users? Facebook would not be where it is today if not the users contributed by creating profiles, writing new posts, publishing photos and sharing links between each others.
It’s not easy to exactly know which direction the ”new web” will take. But it is easy to say that soon the Internet will contain so much information that it will be hard to find what you are looking for without the smart search engines. Therefore the research that W3C is doing on the semantic web, structural and categories the information on the web will contribute to an easier searchable web[45].
The aim with this in-depth literature study was to give some suggestions on how today’s OPAC’s could be adapted for the new version of the web and some thought about which new features Web 3.0 would bring to life. The things that the developers of OPAC’s should have in mind for the future is to offer the users the new and latest technological features.
That OPAC’s can reach the users everywhere, offer more digital items and more intelligent and easier search methods for the users.
How to design a user
customized smart phone
application for an Open Public Access Catalogue
This chapter is an in-depth study about how a smartphone application could be designed to satisfy the users of an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC).
3.1 Introduction
The libraries have developed constantly and today the users are able to search for items, make reservations and a lot more via computers. Few of Minabibliotek’s users visit the site from their mobile phone but many of them want some sort of mobile application. For the libraries to keep developing it would be a good idea to offer all the users a mobile application with the most common or desired services.
For most people the mobile phone is an everyday accessory and during the last couple of years the smart phone has increased in popularity. In 2010 almost 300 million smart phones were sold world wide [17]. Common tasks performed by using smartphone applications are to check the bank account, keeping track of friends via communities or use maps for positioning or finding locations.
A smartphone can be described as a handheld mobile computer integrated with a mobile phone, a telephone with built-in applications and Internet access. Smart phones provide text messaging, e-mail, Web browsing, cameras, MP3 player and video viewing [38] [5].
Smart phones come with a basic set of programs and applications. When the number of smartphone users increases the amount of applications also increases and today there is a possibility for the user to download and install hundreds of thousands of applications which increases the number of situations where the smartphone can be used [2] [3]. With a smart phone you can easily keep yourself up to date since you can carry the smartphone everywhere and the information provided by an application is easily accessible. An application often contains the most common or necessary tools or services that are desired by the users. The benefits of using a mobile application compared to visiting a regular web site are that less
13
information has to be perceived and the user will get a better overview of all information.
When visiting a regular web site with a smartphone, using a small screen, there will however be a lot of zooming and scrolling.
According to Jakob Nielsen ”mobile sites beat full sites ”and he states that to satisfy mobile phone users it is important to build dedicated mobile sites [33]. Nielsen is talking about web sites adjusted for mobile phones and with an application purposely adapted for a smart phone you will take this even a step further.
The chapter will be structured as follows. First I will discuss the information used from the user study. Next I will talk about the different sources of inspiration. Third comes a chapter where I will discuss my sketches and finally I will show and discuss the layouts made in Photoshop.
3.2 Designing the application
In this section I will describe the process of creating the layout for the smart phone appli- cation.
User study
To be able to create a suitable application for the users I had to find out what the users expect from a mobile application. To know what to include in the mobile application I have used the data collected from the user study in this thesis. The study showed that only 4%
of the users visit Minabibliotek.se from their mobile phone. However it is 51% who wants a mobile application for Minabibliotek.
I have used data from the following questions: ”Why do you visit Minabibliotek ”and
”What do you think is relevant on the first page ”. What I also had in mind when I created the design proposals for the application was the desired functions the users mentioned during the user study. The primary desires were the ability to make renewals, reserve books and to receive tips from top lists.
For 25 of the 45 interviewed visitors the main purpose with visiting Minabibliotek is to search for a book or an item in any other format. Reserving an item and renewing a loan follows in second respective third place with 15 and 12 borrowers stating this. There where four users who said that they visited the webpage to book computers and two users checked opening hours.
In one interview the users were asked to mark what they thought was relevant on the first page. We had a total of 16 users participating in this study where every user could mark as many sections as they wanted. The study showed that the most important for the users on the first page is the search function, the login function (for checking loans and renewing loans), opening hours, reserving computers and group activity rooms, get inspired to new loans by new tips, latest graded items and the libraries top 10 lists.
Inspiration
Different types of smart phones and operative systems deliver different types of user experi- ences. Even though the same application is available for both iPhone iOS and HTC Android they do not necessary look the same. To create the best user experience on each platform and to be able to create a good user experience that feels familiar for the web site users but also to the Android users, I have tried to merge the different systems together.
Figure 3.1: The different sources of inspiration.
I have been inspired by the interface of the HTC Desire smartphone using Android 2.3 but also by one of their own applications, the Android Market. I have also been looking at an already existing library application by Norrk¨opings city library [39]. To give the user a more familiar experience I got some inspiration from our own design of the ”Minabib- liotek”webpage.
Figure 3.2: Different stages in Android’s interface for the HTC Desire phone.
I have been looking at Android’s interface for the HTC Desire phone. I wanted to create a natural flow of the information that would be familiar to the Android users, see figure 3.2.
In the picture above to the left you have a set of launch icons. These icons starts a program or application when pressed. If ”Settings”is pressed the title of the page changes from ”All apps”to ”Settings”and a list of options appears as shown in the middle picture. In this list view you still have icons related to the text but the text is a bit larger. If you click any
icon or text in this view you will end up with an even simpler list, see right picture in figure 3.2. The icons on the left side disappears and a small icon to the right appears indicating what kind of setting you are dealing with. A checkbox activates the setting while an arrow indicates that you will receive a number of choices by a popup window.
Sketching
To make the sketching phase easier and to be able to create good sketches I wrote down all the functions and pages the application would contain. The figure below shows the different functions the user would reach from the start page. The guidelines mentioned in this section are guidelines that has been developed from the user study in the thesis. Read more about this in chapter 5.2.
Figure 3.3: Sketches showing different stages for the application. First pictures shows the layout for the first page. The second is showing the list of options when entering the section called ”My pages”. The third picture is showing ”My loans”entered from ”My pages”. The last picture to the right is showing a full post of a selected item.
The following list presents the functions the user would reach from the start page.
– A search box where the user would be able to search for different items. After a search the user should receive a list of results with the ability to enter the full post of an item.
The user should be able to reserve the item, adding it to the memory list, looking at reviews and finding similar items.
According to our first guideline the search box should be clear and visible and have a central position since the most common thing the users are doing at Minabibliotek is to search for works.
– A login function enables the user to enter ”My pages”and renew loans, reserve items, reserving computers and group activity rooms. A user should be able to search for an item or read news, checking opening hours or top lists without a login. If a user would try to reserve something or check ”My pages”the users would be asked to login by a notification window.
According to our second guideline the login box should have a high visibility and be distinguished from the search box.
– A section called ”My pages”will give the user an overview of loans, reservations, mem- ory list, messages and settings.
– The Opening hours page will show the opening hours for different libraries. The user would be able to select a library from a list to receive information about a specific library.
According to our third guideline you should clarify the libraries opening hours since many users visit the library to read the opening hours.
– A Reserve link will give the user the opportunity to reserve computers and group activity rooms.
According to our tenth guideline you should clarify for the users where they can reserve computers and group activity rooms since many users visit minabibliotek.se to reserve computers and group activity rooms.
– Top lists show the latest graded, highest scored and other top lists for different items.
This is a section where the user could be inspired for new loans.
According to our fourth guideline you should help the user to be inspired to new loans.
– News is not a highly desired function but I think a news flow could be desirable for some users, where they find arrangements, recent news and articles.
Designing in Photoshop
When the sketches were made I started to create mockups in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I wanted the user to see a similarity between the web site and the application and therefore I took inspiration from the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) that was created for the prototype in this thesis. I have used the colors from the website in the layout for the application. Icons and text have been placed in the same way as the menus of the HTC Desire phone. The mockups have been created with the resolution of 480 x 800 pixels which is the resolution the HTC Desire screen at 3.7 inch uses [20].
Figure 3.4: Two different design proposals of the first page. What differentiates them is that the first proposal does only have a link to the search function which gives a really clean impression. In the second proposal the search function is placed at the top of the page which is more similar to the web site.
The first thing the users see at the first page is a white logotype saying ”Mina bibliotek”.
It shows the user where they are, helping them to know what application they have launched.
Most applications or web sites have some sort of logo and when you click it you will return to the first page. I have used the same idea here but I have improved the message ”If you click here you will return to the first page”by adding an icon in the form of a small house.
In the header I have used the same gradient as in the web page.
Many users think that the opening hours are important and therefore I have emphasized the opening hours of the users home library below the logotype showing the opening hours of the day. The home library is something that the user choose when registering as a new user. It will save the user some time when they don’t need to enter ”Opening hours”to select a desired library.
To make the interaction easier for the users I wanted to have big clear icons on the start page of the application. These icons are a bit bigger than the launch icons and represents the most important functions desired by the users. A large click area requires less precision and effort to activate[4]. Two of the icons are standard icons for Android, the clock and the search icon, but the other four I created by following the guidelines for Android launch icons [1]. I have used a white background for the whole application just as for the web page.
Many applications require a login to be able to use the application. I want the users to be able to enter this application without any login. The user will se a login text up in the right corner. This text gives the user feedback about the login status. If the user is not logged in the text would say ”login”, otherwise the text would show the users username. I also think that this text could be used as a link to ”My pages”. The login is placed in the top right corner just as on the web site.
Since renewing loans was a highly desired function I have placed ”Your loans”at the start page of the application. It would only show up for the user that is logged in. The users in our study wanted to be able to renew loans and by showing ”Your loans ”on the first page it would become easy to access. The user would also get a great overview of the number of loans and when they should be returned. A small icon to the right, that appears in the Android interface in figure 3.2 to the right, shows that if this area is clicked you will get a set of options in a popup window. If the user would press this item the loan could immediately be renewed. Other things that the user might want to enter quickly could be added to the popup.
Figure 3.5: By placing ”Renew your loan”first I follow the Android guideline ”Place the most frequently used operations first”[1].
In the pop up the user can easily renew a loan or enter a full post. Note that the return date is located in the right upper corner and in the menu the user can see until when the
loan can be extended. The user would get feedback immediately since the return date in the topic will change as the user clicks on the renew option.
Figure 3.6: ”My pages”and ”My loans”
Figure 3.6 shows, ”Mina sidor”, which gives the user an overview of loans, reservations, memory list, messages and settings. A number within parentheses shows how many loans, reservations, items in the memory list or messages a user have. It gives the user a quick overview. The black area with the title of the page reminds of the header of each section used on the web site.
The title of the pages helps the user to know where they are and according to Jakob Nielsen a good navigation system should answer these three questions:
– Where am I?
– Where have I been?
– Where can I go?
Even though this concerns web usability I think it is a good guideline to follow for other types of applications as well[34].
As you can see in figure 3.6 the menu at ”My pages”, uses the same list view mode. All the different text links have an icon connected to them. These are some standard icons for Android that I have used.
Figure 3.7: The ”Search result”page where the first item has been expanded To the left of the search field there is a small icon with small houses representing that you are able to choose to search within different library catalogs. The search result reminds a lot of the structure of ”My pages”. A small picture is showing the book helping the user to recognize a certain book.
Figure 3.8: The search result in ”Norrk¨opings application”
In the ”N¨orrkopings application”they used icons to show the format of an item instead of showing the book. I think it is really hard to figure out what kind of format you enter since the icons do not say much, see figure 3.8.
CS Library (Minabibliotek) have grouped together all different formats for a title in one post and therefore I wanted to do the same in the application. It would be hard to work with a set of icons as in the web site that shows all the different formats. Instead I have used a number, in the place where the formats otherwise is located, showing how many different formats each post have. When the item is clicked all the different formats show up beneath it. This saves space and more titles fit into the list and save the user from scrolling. To show that the different formats belong to the clicked item the lines that separates different formats is a bit lighter and doesn’t span over the whole screen. This gives an overview of all the different items and formats.
Figure 3.9: Fullpost of an item
The full post, in figure 3.9 above, reminds of the full post on the website. The full post is showing a picture of the selected item, title and author but also what kind of format the user have selected to enter.
Since one of the most desired functions was to reserve items, this function has been emphasized. To the right of the reserve button another button with the text ”Add to Memory list”has been added. Here the user is able to quickly add the item to their memory list.Below these two buttons there are the same options as on the website. Here the user could see where the item is located, reviews, similar items, and more information.
3.3 Summary and discussion
I think it is important for the libraries to keep evolving and to offer all their users a mobile application is a step in the right direction. In this in-depth study I have made a design proposal for a mobile application that would meet the users desires and expectations. The proposal is mostly based upon data concerning the web page but it gives a hint of what the layout for an application could look like. To stress similarities between the web site and the application I have used the same colors in the application as on the web site. Many of the interface guidelines I have used are guidelines that I found when we were developing our own design for the ”Minabibliotek”webpage.
I believe that there would be a difference in how users use the website and how they would use a mobile application. For instance, I would not search for items using an mobile application, I would rather use it to keep track of my loans. If a library would like to offer their users a good mobile application I think more user tests are required to create a even more user customized application.
I think it would be a good idea if the users were able to choose the kind of information they wanted to emphasize on the first page by some sort of setting in ”My pages”. Perhaps
”My loans”isn’t relevant for all of the users. A news flow would perhaps be more suited for someone on the first page. It would also be a good idea if the the application could notify the users about loans and messages. It would help the users to keep them up to date.
I have been inspired a lot by Androids interface for the HTC Desire smart phone. They have great menus where consistency results in efficiency. By using icons together with the text instead of just using text they minimize the users memory load, which is an example of Nielsen’s ”Recognition rather than recall”[35].
I am looking forward to the day I can install a user customized mobile application on my Android phone to reserve items in my home library.
User Study
One of our goals in this master’s thesis was to make a user study to find out how the users want to use Teknikhuset’s CS library solution. Without this information we wouldn’t be able to create a user layout customized by the user. To gather the desired information we made a user study where we interviewed the most common users of the system, borrowers and librarians. The user study proved to be more extensive than we had planned and during the process we had to modify our material and find new ways to collect more data. In this chapter we will describe the different methods we used to collect data and the outcome of the user studies.
4.1 Methods
To make a user study we needed to work with an already existing system of CS library and for geographic reasons we chose to work with the Ume˚a region website ”Minabibliotek”. All the interviews with borrowers and librarians were made in Ume˚a city library.
Figure 4.1: A screenshot of Minabiblioteks first page
25
To gather relevant information we did two types of interviews. The first one is of the type a qualitative interview and the second quantitative interview. What really differs between them is that in the qualitative interviews you have questions that invites the user to discuss and reflect on the questions. This is a good way to gather valuable information but it takes a lot of resources to accomplish. Quantitative interviews are based on questions with different alternatives as answers. This kind of survey is cheap in resources and results in more data although not as detailed data as the qualitative interviews[44]. We made the quantitative interview to gather a great deal of information data that we believed would be valuable for us and the qualitative interview to get more reflections and comments about the current system that may have been missed with the quantitative interviews.
Since Teknikhuset had a lot of questions about the user experience of CS Library the interview form was designed in relationship with them. The reason why Teknikhuset didn’t already have answers to these questions was that they so far had not had the resources to find out.
When Teknikhuset felt satisfied with the interview form we contacted Annika Winning who works as a web publicist and is technical responsible for Minabibliotek. We met her to take a look at the librarians internal system called LIBRA.SE to see and discuss if it would be possible to integrate it with Minabibliotek. We made it clear that we were going to interview borrowers in the library and when we got clearance we started to gather data from the borrowers with qualitative interviews made with randomly selected people in the Ume˚a city library.
We had a hard time to get people to participate in our interviews and therefore we came up with the idea that we should make an web survey to reach a greater amount of users.
We contacted the web editorial staff at the Ume˚a city library for the permission to publish a web survey on the first page of Minabiblioteks.
While the web survey was online we tried to increase the amount of data by printing and handing out the survey to randomly selected people at the Ume˚a city library.
To gather data explicitly from the librarians we made qualitative interviews with them, but we also distributed a short web survey to them to receive a big amount of information.
4.2 Interview - borrowers
Since the number of borrowers is much greater then the number of librarians we began our user study with interviewing the borrowers and as soon as Teknikhuset felt pleased with the interview form we started to gather data through an in-depth study by making six pilot tests at the Ume˚a city library. The six pilot test gave us good information about how the users experienced and interpreted the questions. We realized that some questions needed to be rephrased but also that the interview took to long time to answer. Since the interview took more then 10 minutes to answer we had no other choice other then removing some questions and scenarios that felt less relevant for the study.
The in-depth interviews contained a number of questions which primarily were related to the search function on Minabibliotek. The interview also included a part where the user should mark which information or function that they thought was relevant or pointless to have on a library’s first page.
To create a short summary for each item in the search results we wanted to know what kind of information the user felt was important to show. To receive users opinions we had all the available details of a book, called a full post, printed out. On this print the users were asked to mark the information they felt were the most relevant to show in the summary.
Unfortunately it was very hard for the users to decide which information that was relevant
for them in the full post. Many users considered all information as relevant and therefore this part of the interview was removed.
When the survey was revised we had a goal to make 20-30 in-depth interviews with random selected borrowers in Ume˚a city library. Unfortunately we did not achieve that goal. It was very hard to get users to enroll in an extended interview. Many of the library’s visitors that we asked to participate in the study didn’t have time for an interview and some visitors thought that they didn’t have enough knowledge of the system to have something to contribute with. Many visitors in the library were only there to read a book or to study and did not come in contact with the system.
Since many users seemed to be in a hurry we tried to create a interview form that we called ”a fast interview”. We removed a couple of ”closed questions”, questions with alternatives, that we believed the web survey would give answers to. At this point we only had 5 ”open questions”, the ones we believed were the most important and could give us the most valuable data. Even though the interviews didn’t take more than 5 minutes to answer it was still hard to get people to participate. Most likely it didn’t have to do with the time that each interview would take, rather they were not in the mood for an interview.
We created a web survey and turned to the web editorial staff at the city library and asked them to publish a link to our web survey on their first page. It was not a problem if we just came up with a logo to the link. We made a couple of proposals for the logo and the final one had the text ”Give us your opinion”.
Figure 4.2: The final logo of the link to our web survey.
We would rather have had a text like ”Participate to affect” or ”Help us to improve”
because they felt more like you can affect rather then just ask for their opinion. But, the web editorial staff considered that ”affect” could be related to drugs and the logo was therefore rejected. The web editorial staff also posted a link in the Facebook group for Minabibliotek.se, so that we would get as many participants as possible in the survey.
The web survey which was a quantitative interview, consisted for the most part of closed questions so that it would be easy to answer and not take too long time for the users to complete. At the end of the survey we had a number of open questions to get feedback and reflections that we perhaps would’ve missed with the closed questions only. These open questions were not compulsory questions. We hoped that the web survey would collect a great amount of data, but the web survey only got 22 participants. Although the web survey did reach out to a lot of users via the first page we believe that it is really hard to get internet users to participate in a survey. We had a deadline for the web survey and due the last day we tried another last approach. We printed out the survey and distributed it to randomly selected people in the city library. The positive thing about handing out the survey was that it was really easy to get users to take the survey. Probably it doesn’t feel as private as an interview and some people saw it as a good break in their studies or other activities.
The in-depth interviews had 12 participants. The web survey together with the printed survey had 33 participants so we got data from a total of 45 visitors at the library and Minabibliotek. Beyond this we had 16 borrowers that marked what they thought were
relevant on the first page.
4.3 Interview - librarians
When the user study with the visitors was finished we began to gather data from the librarians. We did this with two different methods. Through interviews and with a web survey. Something that can be mentioned is that it is the librarians who order the different functionalities of the page and therefore we hoped to get many comments and suggestions for improvements from them.
The first interviews we made with the librarians were made during an all day-session at the library. All the librarians were notified about our presence and were informed that we would be sitting next to their dining room/coffee room for a whole day and that it was free to come and talk to us and give us feedback about the system for improvements. We had a couple of questions that we wanted to discuss so it would be easier to design CS Library for both the visitors and the librarians. The questions were asked in an open way which would invite to own opinions and thoughts. An interview took about 10 minutes depending on how much own opinions they had to share. During the whole day on the library only 5 librarians showed up.
Since there were so few librarians showing up for the interviews at Ume˚a city library we created a web survey that we could send out to all librarians in the Ume˚a region with help the of Ingalill Stenmark. This web survey reached about 170 librarians according to Ingalill Stenmark. Of all these librarians only four of them answered the survey. What this low frequency of answers depends on is hard to say. Maybe it is because they don’t use Minabibliotek that much and therefore they do not really care about the system. On the other hand they may be satisfied with the system so that they don’t think a new design and/or functionality is necessary.
4.4 Conclusion of user study
This section contains a conclusion of our user study. Detailed information can be found in Appendix A for borrowers and Appendix B for librarians.
If you would generalize the data from the user study you could say that most borrowers are females (62%) and most of the users are between 20-35 years old (64%). They mainly visit Minabibliotek to borrow books, make renewals and reserve works. Most of the users (83%) limit their search to two pages of results. They get inspired to new loans by friends, TV and newspapers. Half of the participants in the user study want to be able to filter their search results where 62% wants to be able to search for only children- and youth books. Most of the users (84%) wants to see ”similar books” and the majority (58%) of the participants wants to see ”The user who borrowed this borrowed also”. A third of them are using the
”simple list” layout of their search results and the same amount of users changes the order of the search results. About 40% of the users uses the expanded catalog search. Even though only 4% of the participants have visited Minabibliotek with their mobile phone more than half of the interviewed want some sort of smart phone application for the site. A number of 40% of the users think it is hard to find the book in the library and all the participants that we made our pilot test with (6) would happily rate their book when they returned it if they could. Title, author and publications year is the most important properties when the users are asked how they want their items to be sorted.
The librarians use their internal system Libra most of the time (95%) and they think that Minabibliotek is much slower compared to their internal system. They are missing hotkeys and the ability to move fast between different modules. In Libra is information more compressed and with the hotkeys it allows the user to be more independent from the mouse. They are missing the functionality in Minabiblitotek where you can see where in queue a borrower is for an item and a lending function. The majority of the librarians don’t use the function simple list and would like the opportunity to filter their search on formats, authors, library and countries. The most common question the librarians has to answer is about the login function.
We have tried to group all the negative comments from the borrowers and the librari- ans into different categories to see where the problems are. We saw that we could group the comments into three different categories, layout, function and search. Layout has to do with things that already exists on the site but may be displayed in a poor way or placed in the wrong position. In search everything is related to the search function. It can be that the misspelling controller is bad or that the user is missing some kind of filter. Finally we have a category called ”Function” where comments like ”the site is slow” and ”I’m missing hot keys” belong. To improve the site for as many users as possible we had these comments in mind when the new interface was developed.
Figure 4.3: The negative comments we received divided into three different categories.
We have realized that in the current version of CS Library many users think that you need to know what you are looking for. Their ”Top lists” are based on number of loans and ”latest graded items” but the users think these functions are hard to find. During one interview a user said that it would be nice if you were able to click your way to a book.
This could be done with some sort of cloud search or an improved filter search.
Something that the users complain about is the misspelling controller since it doesn’t really work like it should. Even if you get a suggestion you will frequently receive a strange or poor suggestion. A good misspelling controller would help a lot of users that are having
