I would be interested in collaborating in some way as well. I’d especially like to see some documentation for some qualitative usability approaches (focus groups, interviews, etc.) since I think those tend to get short shrift in some of the existing material.
Jeanine ------------------------------------------- Jeanine Finn Data Science and Digital Scholarship Coordinator The Claremont Colleges Library 800 North Dartmouth Ave. | Claremont, CA 91711 (909) 607-7958 | [email protected] Pronouns: she/her/hers > On Jan 3, 2019, at 8:41 AM, Andrew L Hickner <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dear Joshua, > > I have thought about this for years. I would be very much interested in > collaborating on such an effort. > > > > Andy Hickner, MSI > Health Sciences Librarian > Seton Hall University | Interprofessional Health Sciences Campus > [email protected] | 1-973-542-6973 > http://library.shu.edu/ihs > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gomez, Joshua > Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 11:32 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [CODE4LIB] Usability and A/B test results clearinghouse > > I am wondering if there exists some kind of clearinghouse of data from > usability tests and A/B tests on digital libraries and archives. Or, if such > a thing does not exist, if members from this community would be interested in > building one with me. > > I’m sure many results have been published in papers in various journals or > blog posts. But what I had in mind was an accumulation of many such results > into a central place, so that it would be possible to quickly lookup and > answer questions like “which facets/filters are used most or least?” or > “which layouts of complex objects result in more images/bitstreams being > viewed/streamed?” and so on. The general goal is to build up an > evidence-based set of design patterns for digital library interfaces. > > I already have strong opinions about some of these questions, but I would > like data to back them up before acting on them. For instance, I think the > consistent use of author and subject fields in faceted search is an > antipattern. Any field with more than a few dozen possible terms seems > unusable (to me) in faceted search. I think it would be much better to use > type-ahead search for data in these fields and use facets/filters only on > simpler fields like date, language, or resource type. But these are just > opinions and I would like some proof. > > I could run my own tests locally, and I intend to, but I would feel more > confident if I saw consistent results from multiple institutions. And I don’t > think I need to convince anyone subscribing to this list about the merits of > working collaboratively and sharing knowledge. > > So if you know of something like this, please point me to it. Or if you are > interested in putting something like this together, please get in touch. > > Joshua Gomez > Head of Software Development & Library Systems UCLA Library > [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> >
