Week Ten: Testing
Hannah Hiles | 24 March 2016 | Durham NC
I had a fairly exciting week in terms of Things Happening. I got to sit in on my first Usability Test with my supervisor, which was really great. Science in action! I took notes while she conducted the test, which was on something that I and my fellow field study student had actually previously been assisting with – updating our “Ask a Librarian” page – something that had previously seen as clunky, outdated, and in need of a facelift.
Things I learned:
- I was (un)pleasantly surprised by how many people preferred the old website design to the new one
- Our amazingly small sample size of n=7 proved that not all millennials hate phones, face-to-face conversation, or asking for help
- Adam Savage's The difference between science and screwing around is writing things down is the most ridiculously true thing ever
I'm starting to compile all the information we got from our study, and will also begin creating recommendations for the webpage based on what our students said. Crazy!
I also started Phase III of my big plan for revamping DukeSpace and the Institutional Repository this week 1) of uploading my newly formatted PDFs to DukeSpace. I had noticed, while researching other uploaded files already on DukeSpace, that many creators also included metadata space for Abstracts. I threw this as a suggestion to my supervisor – what if we included Abstracts on our report pages, too? – and she went for it. The result, I think, is much more polished and attractive presentation of our research.
Note the before webpage for an AUX document on DukeSpace:
And check out the re-vamped after!
Swanky, right?