by I’ve been doing a lot of usability testing as we redesign the library website. It has been both enlightening and unsurprising at the same time. It’s confirming many of my beliefs and biases when it comes to the library website.
Most recently, we did a little guerrilla testing, nabbing folks to take a look at our prototype and see what they thought and how they might use it. Generally, we got some good feedback. Most liked the way we were going with the designing, using terms like user friendly, easier to use, organized, and modern. Yay!
There’s been lots of interesting feedback from this testing that I’m still sifting through. But what surprised me was how often, when asked what they would do on the library website and presented it to them, they simply said they wouldn’t use the library website. They would ask friends, google, ask at the circulation desk. Now, this isn’t terribly surprising – we know that our users often come to the library website as a last resort. There are lots of other ways for our users to find what they need. What surprised me was that they wouldn’t even look at what we were showing them to see what they could do. It simply wasn’t their behaviour, so they didn’t want to bother looking.
So, what does this mean? I’m still working that out. Do we need our users to come to the library website? Certainly not for everything. When they do, it should be user friendly. But I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the answer I wouldn’t use the library website. Definitely more testing in store!
I wonder if users think of “doing” something “on” the library website. I don’t know the exact wording of your question but it could be phrasing the question differently might get different kinds of responses. I do also suspect that the portion of any college community that uses the library website intentionally is much smaller than those who don’t use it (and then I wonder if the percentages have shifted much over time).
There is definite work to be done with the questions but I don’t think that’s the sole issue. I did give them the ipad and state using this website, how would you x and they replied I’d ask my friends. Ok, but using the website I just gave you, where would you find this information – one simply said they wouldn’t rather than taking a look at the website in front of them. Ok, fair enough. Part of it may be that we approached rather than sought volunteers, so they weren’t prepared to spend any time on the task but I suspect that it’s also a sign of actual user behaviour.
I agree that intentional use of the website is smaller than we’d like and when they do that it’s frequently only to access database and other linked resources. Now, if we could create a seamless user experience for that, we might be on to something.