CDL Database Transitions

a. Round One of Usability Testing Completed on Melvyl-T Interface

The first round of usability testing on the Melvyl-T prototype interface was completed April 12 by the Evaluation Liaisons at six campuses: Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz.  Each campus conducted tests with 3-8 participants, both undergraduate and graduate students (and one faculty member).  Participants were offered incentives to take the tests, ranging from gift certificates to Jamba Juice to campus copy cards.  A goal was to include some non-native English speakers in the testing, and besides English, languages of the participants included Spanish, Farsi, Tagalog, Hindi, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

The campus Evaluation Liaisons took detailed notes while the participants conducted the tasks, which the CDL provided.  All of the notes were sent to the CDL on a spreadsheet, so that the results could be analyzed across users.  Campuses debriefed with CDL on the phone after the tests were completed.  The results of the testing have informed the CDL on portions of the interface that need enhancing to be more usable for catalog users, and work began almost immediately to improve the interface.

The CDL is very grateful to the campus Evaluation Liaisons, who did an outstanding job of conducting and reporting on the results of their usability tests