Some participants found the filters No apparent order or structure to the list of appealing and engaging (e.g., “Hey, it’s items, making it hard to understand like eBay!”) (participants didn’t pick up on sorting the list by # of items retrieved) Near real-time filtering provides a sense of immediacy and control (dynamic Similar-sounding content types can be manipulation) confusing (“journal” vs. “journal article”) Can be confusing to see a different set of options for each query, especially when expecting a particular option such as “book” to be present Participants expected to be able to filter by author/title/journal name Subject terms Strengths Weaknesses Participants expressed desire to control Somewhat overwhelming number of terms search parameters beyond the content presented in a very long list type, suggesting control of subject or Large variety of terms from different fields topic could have value and disciplines, without structure or Summon can return results from many grouping to facilitate understanding different fields/disciplines, which subject Default sorting (by # of items) is difficult to terms can help to disambiguate scan, and participants did not use the alphabetical sort function Date Strengths Weaknesses Slider widget is engaging and easy to We observed little interest in or need for understand this filter, across all participants Dropdown menus for choosing a specific date are opaque and hard to interpret at first
Some participants found the filters appealing and engaging (e.g., “Hey, it’s like eBay!”) Near real-time filtering provides a sense of immediacy and control (dynamic manipulation) No apparent order or structure to the list of items, making it hard to understand (participants didn’t pick up on sorting the list by # of items retrieved) Similar-sounding content types can be confusing (“journal” vs. “journal article”) Can be confusing to see a different set of options for each query, especially when expecting a particular option such as “book” to be present Participants expected to be able to filter by author/title/journal name Subject terms Strengths Weaknesses Participants expressed desire to control search parameters beyond the content type, suggesting control of subject or topic could have value Summon can return results from many different fields/disciplines, which subject terms can help to disambiguate Somewhat overwhelming number of terms presented in a very long list Large variety of terms from different fields and disciplines, without structure or grouping to facilitate understanding Default sorting (by # of items) is difficult to scan, and participants did not use the alphabetical sort function Date Strengths Weaknesses Slider widget is engaging and easy to understand We observed little interest in or need for this filter, across all participants Dropdown menus for choosing a specific date are opaque and hard to interpret at first
Summon-usability.docx