Digital Library Design for Usability

Overview:

During the last decade, software designers have made progress in developing usable systems for products such as word processors. Less attention has been given to usability in digital library (DL) design. In this paper, we discuss two forms of DL usability - interface and organizational. While the Human-Computer-Interaction research community has helped pioneer design principles to improve interface usability, organizational usability is less well understood. "Design for usability" is a new term that refers to the design of computer systems so that the organizational usability is addressed. DL developers need to consider "design for usability" issues during DL system design. Anthropologists have successfully used cultural models to understand the cultural constructs by which people view the world. Computer systems development communities, including the DL design community, usually have some consensus (cultural models) about the role of usability in their development process. We discuss five typical models of computer systems design. These models become cultural models when they are taken for granted within a professional community as THE way to design all systems. A new model that incorporates "design for usability" principles into system design is proposed. We believe that this model has the strongest chance of producing usable DL systems.

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