| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 教育科技學系碩士班 === 97 === Library is the most valuable element in higher education. In the digital era, for the library website to provide information sharing and to reduce digital divide, the interface must have the features of intuition and user-friendliness to facilitate efficiency of use of the resources and services. The purpose of this study was to investigate the usability of Tamkang University Chueh-Sheng Memorial Library website through user testing and heuristic evaluation to ascertain whether the design conform to usability principles. Additionally, this study also aimed to report the usability testing results. The participants in this study were 7 users and 3 experts. The users were college freshmen from Tamkang University Tamsui campus, while the experts were from the field of interface design and usability.
The results of this study were as follows: 1. Only 3 out of 9 of the satisfaction ratings were higher than 3.5, namely page layout, color coordination, and operational design, indicating that users were unsatisfied with the interface design. 2. The web design did not conform to Nielsen’s (1993) definition components of usability, which are learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. 3. In terms of interface design and usability, this study provided suggestions for revision according to interface design principles compiled by the researcher and 5 definition components of usability proposed by Nielsen (1993).
Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions were made.First, to enhance usability of websites, designers should grasp elements of usability and human-computer interaction and think from users’ perspectives. In addition, library websites should be viewed as media rather than tools. Second, with regard to future research, use 5-point rating scale for heuristic evaluation. Face-to-face interviews should also be carried out to gather further conceptions. Third, as far as user testing is concerned, future studies can increase sample size and user heterogeneity, conduct iterative testing and revision, provide consent form to users, use FireFox browser to open the testing website, and prepare additional computers in case of technical difficulties.
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