Usability test for Hunt Library touchscreens, Round One

In December 2016 four students participated in a usability test of touchscreens to be deployed in Hunt Library. The interface was still in development, and so the tests influenced the design. We will conduct another round of usability testing after we turn on the touchscreens for the public in Spring 2017. Sixteen touchscreens will be available, dispersed throughout Hunt Library. They will offer directions, lists of available rooms, information about events, and an Explore section that shows highlights of the library.

Research questions

1. Does the touch interaction work well?
2. Do participants understand how to choose among the top-level categories: Directions, Rooms, Events, and Explore?
3. Does each section match participants’ expectations and work well?

   What worked well

4. Touch interactions. Participants were able to click buttons and scroll as we expected. None of the four participants used multiple fingers to touch or scroll, which could have been a problem.
5. Finding known-item events. Two participants revealed that they did not understand the categories within Events (Today at Hunt, Events, Workshops, and Exhibits), but this did not prevent them from finding the events they were looking for.
6. Participants were able to navigate into each section and back out to the Home screen.
7. In Directions both the “elevators only” accessibility function and the “see it again” function that draws the navigational path again, worked well. Both did not work as well for the first two participants. Then Matthew O’Connell, developer, changed the interface, and the next two participants were better able to find the functions.
8. The speed at which the interface draws navigational lines. The first participant commented that it was too fast. Then O’Connell changed the speed, and the next three did not comment on it being fast.

   Issues

9. One participant went to Rooms (which shows reservable rooms) when the task of finding directions to the Auditorium was best served by Directions.
10. Inability to reserve rooms from the touchscreens. One participant tried to find a (nonexistent) way to reserve; the other three could tell that the screens do not do that and commented that they wished they could.
11. Three participants said they wished for a search function to find known rooms in the Directions section.
12. The meaning of Explore (one of the four section labels on the Home screen) is unclear, commented two participants.

    Suggestions from the participants

13. Directions should, in addition to drawing a path, list the steps, e.g., “go up the stairs to the 2nd floor; turn right; go through the gates…” the way Google Maps does.
14. Maps could show reservable room availability with color coding.

    Recommendations and Changes

    Consider:
15. Google Maps-style step-by-step textual directions. This would help the touchscreens match familiar platform conventions, what Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design call “consistency and standards.” This could be difficult to implement.
16. a search function for room names. This would enhance “flexibility and efficiency of use” (another of Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.)
17. how to address participants' expressed desire to reserve rooms from the touchscreens. This would be a serious development challenge.