Usability Analysis of a Caribbean Academic Library Website: A Case Study

This study proposed a usability evaluation of the web site of the Main Library of the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). It sought to get users and site visitors to identify the major strengths and weaknesses of the site and to incorporate the results and participant feedback into a redesign to reflect users' intuitions rather than those of the site developers and librarians. The site was revised and redesigned in June 2005 following the recently appointed Systems Manager's dissatisfaction with the content and design of the previous site. The revision was lead by the web administrator with input from the librarians. It was, therefore, an in-house, systems (library) centred initiative. Even though a test and production site was constructed, no formal usability study of the revised site had been conducted to take into account real users and their interaction with the site. To further these aims the study used a combination of experimental and respondent research strategies. In addition, both usability heuristics [16] and ISO guidelines [10] were used to assess effectiveness, learnability, usefulness and user satisfaction. While there were several methods available to evaluate usability, this study used a multilateral approach to include self completion questionnaires, focus groups, formal usability testing and card sort. Respondent strategies used a sample size of 529 participants for the self completion questionnaires and 16 participants in the focus group sessions. Experimental strategies combined observation of 21 individual participants and 3 groups of participants in the usability tests. In the card sort protocol 9 individual participants and 3 groups of participants were observed. Findings revealed challenges in the site's information architecture with specific reference to the labelling and organization and how users made sense of these. Also identified were challenges in the interface design. Limitations include a need for more ethnographic and indirect observational approaches to elicit distinctive Caribbean user behaviours on the one hand, and to minimize participant anxieties associated with direct observational approaches on the other. However, it should be noted that the latter point was addressed as far as possible in the study, within the boundaries of its scope. The study recommended that similar usability evaluations be undertaken at the other UWI campus library websites and on A other types of interface such as the library's online public access catalogue (OPAC); it also recommended that usability training should be incorporated into the culture of the library organization. Critical next steps for the web designer were also suggested. The value proposition for this project was seen in the lessons of organizational change and the impact of technology on relationship between systems and user services librarians.