Deirdre Costello
Deirdre Costello, Senior UX Researcher at EBSCO Information Services, presented the results of a user interface study of searchers in medical, academic, and public libraries. She began with the emotional states of the searchers. Students search to find an overview, narrow their topic, and find citable sources for their assignments; doctors search to confirm what they already know; and public library users search to find a specific book, research a big-ticket purchase, or support their work.
The study looked at behaviors of searchers in the 3 groups:
- Students showed anxiety about understanding their topic. Their usual first search is to understand a topic, so it tends to be broad. Every student in the study showed a mix of positive and negative emotion.
- Doctors search primarily to confirm what they already know. They are 99% sure they know, but want to be 100%. They don’t want to be patronized but want resources that speak to them in a tone of respect. They are very pressed for time and usually have only a couple of minutes to search at point of care.
- Public library users exhibited very different behaviors. They were usually outliers in most studies. They enjoy searching but may be upset when a website is redesigned or changed.
Students and doctors are subject to an “eye byte” culture because of the stresses they are under and may use skimming or scanning techniques to examine their search results. The way we read online is influencing our behavior, and we have a lower tolerance for longer chunks of text. Public library users have a higher tolerance for long chunks of text because they are often reading for pleasure.
How do users interact with Google? Students say that Google is their “soulmate”. They generally look at only the first 3 results. They like the snippets when their search terms are reflected back to them because it appears that Google has heard them. They generally do not click on results and read further than the snippets. URLs are used as indicators of quality; .org and .edu sites are more credible than .com ones. Doctors are looking for known information and want trusted sites. Public library users judge by URL to select known sources of quality information.
What do these behaviors mean for libraries and their resources? Students start with search, then go to the library website and use the same search terms as on Google, looking for them in the titles. They use secondary “buzzwords” to form a “constellation of results”. Snippets may be difficult to interpret because they are written at a higher reading level so it’s hard for students to find information on the fly. Author and title information is not as useful for high school students, but it is very useful for doctors and graduate students. Doctors navigate to known items, then scan for known quantities. But they don’t associate the library with online access. They are frustrated by a requirement to log in to a service because they have only 2 minutes to do a search and don’t want to spend any time on logging in. So they go elsewhere. Public library users trust the results if the first one is for the book they are looking for. They may not be aware that the library has more than books. They also have less incentive to persevere and solve system problems; they tend not go through a forgotten password procedure.
Takeaways from this study include:
- Google is hugely influential.
- The way users read online is changing.
- Search results have evolved from a portal to information to a destination.
- Users are “porting” habits they have learned on the open web, but the experience is not as seamless as they expect.
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