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Usability test with Rhonda on 20 June 2023

Recording can be accessed here.

Usability test to inform iteration 2.

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1. Show us how you conduct one of your regular newspaper searches

   1. Question: What do you think the Fulltext toggle does/means?

2. Try the advanced search Fulltext option in the new advanced search preview

Outcomes & insights

NOTE - due to technical difficulties, the user was unable to screen share. Julie “drove” instead with instructions from the user.

1. Show us how you conduct one of your regular newspaper searches

   1. What do you think the Fulltext toggle does/means?

      1. Her answer: “That you’re drilling down into your current results”

      2. In other words, she doesn’t understand what “Fulltext” refers to until it’s explained to her. She was using it before because we automatically turn it on for Newspapers theme.

   2. She uses the THEME (Newspapers), PROVIDING COUNTRY (Germany), LANGUAGE (German), and INSTITUTION (Hamburg State Library) filters most.

   3. She uses the date range filter often as a workaround for not having the option to sort chronologically. E.g. she would put in a span of three years only, review the results form that, and then put in a new date range of the next few years, and so on.

   4. She misses being able to sort chronologically.

   5. She wants to be able to search for terms that are “near to” other terms - e.g. in the same page or article in the newspaper.

2. Try the advanced search Fulltext option in the new advanced search preview (due to Julie “driving” we couldn’t test whether or not the Fulltext option is findable in the FIELD dropdown)

   1. We built the following query together: Title contains “borsen-halle” (name of newspaper); Fulltext contains “Ahlmann” (captain name); Fulltext contains “nicoline” (ship name)

   2. Again, there is some tension between what goes into the main search bar vs. what would go into a “Fulltext” search query.

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1. Have the advanced search to update results instantly, when a user enters a search term or when they click the CLEAR button.

2. Therefore, remove the blue APPLY button.

3. Provide explanations for some FIELDS. For example:

   1. Define the fields “Consists of,” “Has met,” “Is part of,” etc.

   2. Describe the difference between fields like Date, Year, Creation date, Issued date, Temporal, etc.

4. Update the UI design so the user can more easily see the main search bar, the advanced search, and the filters at once. Most of the issue here is with the main search bar, and how it covers the advanced search and also disappears easily.

   1. Also, make it more clear that typing a search term into the main search bar is the same as searching for “Any field contains”. This was not obvious to the user.

5. Test with a couple more people.

Also (from June 20 session):

1. Rename the “Fulltext” option in the FIELD dropdown so it’s more descriptive?

Suggestions for future iterations of the search (in general)

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