Maximizing coverage, reducing time: a usability evaluation method for web-based library systems

The usability of a Web Based Library System (WBLS) is an important quality attribute that must be met in order for the intended users to be satisfied. These usability quality attributes are available in two forms: general to web systems and domain-specific. It must be evaluated through some evaluation method such as checklist. Many evaluation checklists have been proposed, although they mostly facilitate the evaluation of WBLS’s general usability aspects, but they lack in covering domain-specific usability aspects of WBLS. There is a need to define domain specific usability aspects to maximize the usability for such systems. The purpose of this research is to develop and validates a usability evaluation checklist that supports the evaluation of general as well as specific usability aspects of WBLS. To accomplish this, a control experiment was conducted in the first phase with undergraduate students to develop a usability evaluation checklist that includes both general and specific usability aspects. Another controlled experiment will be used in the second phase to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed checklist with the existing checklist as "Academic Library Website Evaluation Checklist". The manual and statistical result shows that, the proposed usability evaluation checklist is effective with maximum coverage of general and specific usability aspects. Furthermore, the proposed checklist is equally efficient while identifying the usability errors in WBLS. The proposed checklist is beneficial for the academia as well as industry to evaluate the usability of WBLS to an optimal level.