Advanced search: Usability testing

Owned by Julie Van Oyen
Last updated: Jun 21, 2024
9 min read

Links in page:

External link:

Usability test with Maddalena on 5 June 2023

Informal & quick usability test at the time of release.

About this user: Maddalena is a researcher whose interest is in paintings that contain food items, from various time periods. For anyone interested, all of her galleries are under the user @crowdschoolfood

Tasks

  1. Find the advanced search feature

  2. Use it to conduct one of your regular searches

  3. Try different combinations of the search bar + advanced search query builder + search filters and compare the results

Outcomes & insights

  1. Find the advanced search feature

    1. She entered the search term “painting fruit 18th century” on the home page, which brought her to the search results. From here, she found the advanced search easily.

  2. Use it to conduct one of your regular searches

    1. She started deleting words from her original search, and adding them to the advanced search query builder. First, she deleted “fruit” and then added a query with FIELD = “Subject”; MODIFIER = “contains”; and SEARCH TERM = “fruit”. This yielded relatively few results, so she tried FIELD = “Description”. This yielded more results.

    2. She was unclear of what some of the FIELDS mean; for example, what is the difference between Date, Year, Creation date, Issued date, Temporal, etc.?

  3. Try different combinations of the search bar + advanced search query builder + search filters and compare the results

    1. She discovered (through prompts from me) that the Date field doesn’t respond well to “18th”, and is better with “18” (numbers only). She also discovered that the Medium field didn’t work well with the term “painting”, so it was better to leave “painting” in the main search bar at the top of the page.

Example searches:

  1. Her usual search that she would do before having the advanced search: https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=1&view=grid&query=painting%20fruit%2018th%20century

    1. Conducting a similar search, with different FIELDS applied:

      1. https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=1&view=grid&query=painting%2018th%20century&qa=proxy_dc_description%3Afruit

      2. https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=1&view=grid&query=painting&qa=proxy_dc_description%3Afruit&qa=proxy_dc_date%3A%2A17%2A

      3. https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?qa=proxy_dc_description%3Afruit&qa=proxy_dc_date%3A%2A17%2A&qa=proxy_dcterms_medium%3Apainting&query=&view=grid&page=1

    2. Combinations of search queries + filters

      1. https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=1&qa=proxy_dc_description%3Afruit&qf=collection%3Aart&query=painting&view=grid - this result was one of her favourites; though there is no date applied which she would prefer (but that narrows the results too much).

Answers to specific usability questions

  1. Do you expect the advanced search to update results instantly (on input instead of clicking APPLY), as do the filters?

    1. She found & used the APPLY button easily. But when asked, she said she would prefer the results to update instantly.

  2. Do you easily recognise when search rules are or are not applied?

    1. She noticed the advanced search and filters easily, but missed the search bar contents several times (since it’s way at the top of the page, and sometimes closes & hides its contents).

  3. Do you miss a clear/reset all button?

    1. She did not seem to need one when building queries. She never added more than 3 queries, and cleared them all individually without complaint. When asked, she said she doesn’t feel the need for a clear all option.

  4. Does clicking CLEAR + APPLY make sense for removing the results from a given query?

    1. No; she expected the results to update instantly when she clicked the CLEAR button, and became confused when they didn’t.

 

Usability test with Rhonda on 20 June 2023

Recording can be accessed here.

Usability test to inform iteration 2.

About this user: Rhonda is a personal researcher whose interest is in her family’s genealogy and their history as worldwide ship captains on certain ships, and newspaper articles related to those; she left us feedback on the newspapers filter, which is how we got in contact with her.

Questions

  1. What is your interest in Europeana.eu?

    1. Personal family genealogy; ship captains and world wide voyages; Denmark to hamburg; she uses newspapers from all over the world (especially Germany, on our site). Quote: “the nice thing about ships is that they’re always in the newspaper”. There are numerous stories of shipwrecks, and how her family members experiences influenced maritime law.

    2. Primarily accesses German newspapers through our site (Hamburg). For example, searching for a ship named “Nicoline”, with captain “Ahlmann”, although it may have had different captains at different times, which is something she is also interested in. She also looks at genealogical records like marriage announcements etc.

  2. Desktop / laptop/ mobile / other?

    1. Desktop

  3. Chrome / Safari /IE / Firefox / other?

    1. Firefox

Tasks

  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.

Example searches:

  1. Her usual search before the new advanced search:

    1. nicoline - Search

  2. With the advanced search and Fulltext as a FIELD:

    1. https://pr-1982.portal-js.dev.eanadev.org/en/search?page=1&qa=proxy_dc_title%3Aborsen%5C-halle&qa=fulltext%3Anicoline&qf=collection%3Anewspaper&query=&view=list

 

 

Usability test with Larissa on 27 June 2023

Tasks

  1. Show me your regular searches, describe your experience and feedback that you wanted to give today

  2. Find the advanced search feature

  3. Use it to conduct one of your regular searches

  4. Get feedback on the aggregated fields options in the Fulltext PR

  5. Do you ever search within newspapers, or would you like to search within video subtitles?

    1. If so, look at the Fulltext PR

 

Regular searches (not really using advanced search yet) - in Swedish

  • Searches for international collections related to her collection or item that she's currently working with. She searches to find out if other institutions have collections connected to it; she will also try on SOC (Swedish aggregator) but their search function isn't always great, so then she’ll try on Europeana.

    • bernadotte – Sök - Researching a boarding school in Sörmlands; was interested in finding out more about the pupils , such as one with last name = “Bernadotte”.

    • nordiska kompaniet – Sök - “nordiska kompaniet” for a furniture design exhibition.

 

Advanced search - in Swedish

  • Found it easily (she has used it once or twice)

  • “Has met”? I don’t know what that means. Also, “Place time” and “temporal”.

  • Definitions also needed for “is made of”, and also “rights” - how is this different than rights statement filter?

  • “Modifierare” (MODIFIER dropdown label) doesn’t mean anything in Swedish; suggests not having a title for this dropdown, just have “contains” or something.

  • Searching in Swedish “hund” brings back way too many results - like “HUNdred” (selecting different fields, such as description or title, improves this though…)

  • Would still like to see an exclusion filter for Aggregator, Institution and Theme - because these aren’t in the advanced search, it’s not easy to figure out how to exclude within them

 

Fulltext PR (link) - in English

  • Fulltext explanation (info tooltip in dropdown) makes sense

  • She likes the styling of this dropdown more too: “this dropdown looks better” and

  • Modifier dropdown: She like sthat it now has the the filled text “select a modifier”

  • “Does not contain” should be added into tooltip for search term

  • Agg fields - “I don’t get this these options” and when you put it in your query - “Where contains hund” - She likes the other options I put in the Jira ticket. Also especially the when = century (that’s a unique timescale compared to the other fields, she thinks)

  • Re: replacing the term “fulltext” with something that more closely describes newspaper contents, video subtitles, and transcribed items: We could conditionally show an alert that matches newspapers, videos, and transcribed items

  • She also pointed out the possible use case for using fulltext without newspapers or videos (general)

 

Search filters

  • “Can I use this?” filter; sees how it’s easier to use. But could use some kind of deeper explanation to such a vague set of options. Rights statement added back in is great; she’s often restricted to very specific licenses so she only uses this one

  • Publication criteria toggle - people might not understand what this is, and may sound like a content warning. Also letting people see these items more clearly, just to know that they exist, or searching for older things. The houses example, the addresses as a very important and publicly relevant piece of metadata (people looking up their own houses, their own families, places they’ve visited; and people still want to find them regardless of the quality (how does this filter work? what if the metadata is good, but the media/data isn’t good)

  • Themes seem random - why are these themes next to each other, how are they connected?

  • Themes looks like multiselect; why can’t it be?

  • A bit more explanation on item quality as they relate to licenses, relating these two things maybe isn’t intuitive

 

Item page

(She has some feedback for the item page, which is obviously from a more CHI perspective, but shows us what they want/how they want to be presented)

  • She misses having the provider name link in metadata - because it’s actually the name underlined as a hyperlink, potentially more easily findable/recognisable.

  • Would like to see institution info box on the entity page, preview the way wikipedia does on google:

  • I’m really missing (from the previous version) that much of the metadata is now “hidden”; date should be added back under “good to know”; professionals in CH and academia would want to see most of this, instead of having it hidden; IDEA: measure who actually stays (numbers) and cross section that with the rough number that we think are professionals/experts - considers that it’s more meaningful

 

Other comments on the website

  • Translating well known names like Nordiska Museet into English is weird, people might not expect that because its original name is such a well known brand. In her opinion, it would be been better to just keep the original, even for the smaller institutions - because she would look up the original name anyway before searching for them

  • “Stories” in Swedish translation doesn’t work so well; berattelser replaced with explore

  • She likes the list view (search results page), and how it shows more details on the items and feels like less going on. But she hadn’t figured out how to use it before, toggle wasn’t obvious to her.

 

Suggestions for iteration 2 of the advanced search

(based on this usability test, and discussions with the SE team)

  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?

Full list can be found in the implementation ticket.

Suggestions for future iterations of the search (in general)

  1. Allow sorting: In order of issue date (Newspapers)

  2. Detect whether search terms are “near to” each other (e.g. in the same newspaper article, or at least on the same page)

Full list can be found in the design spike ticket.