Website
The website I asked my user to test was jaxpubliclibrary.org, a website that I use or look at almost every day for work purposes. I work at one of the Jacksonville Public Library branches and am very familiar with this website, and was interested to see how someone would interact with it that was not familiar with it. My user is older than me and most of their technology knowledge comes from the interfaces they use for work.
User Usage
To start the test, I let me user look around the website as there is immediately a lot to see and look at. The user does have a library card but has never logged on or accessed anything from the library website. The first thing the user clicked on was the “Events & Classes” tabs it immediately takes you too just a really long list of events in date order. After scrolling down this page the user then clicked on one of the options at the top of the page that says “Find Your Next Read.” This took the user to a page with a form to fill out of their interests and then book recommendations would be emailed to you. When on this page, there is not a search bar at the top like there normally is on the other website pages. So when the user then wanted to search for a book there was mild confusion on how to do so. Since having the user look for a book was one of the tasks I wanted the user to do I told the user to click back to the home page of the website which would show the search bar again.
For the first task I asked the user to look up Where the Crawdads Sing, as I knew the user has read this book and was familiar with it. I told the user I wanted them to look for the physical book, not an e-book or audiobook, to see how many holds were on it. The user went to the search bar and wanted to change the filter to search by author but the filters do not have options like that. They are set up to change the search to search the catalog, databases, events, or the website. So the user then typed the book title into the search bar and searched. Immediately the results are for e-materials, which I knew would happen but the user was confused by that. They thought that it would make more sense for the physical copy of the book to come up first. The physical book is the third thing on the list. I asked the user to see how many holds were on the book, and it is clearly shown that there are 179 holds on the items by patrons. The next task was to find a certain event back on the events page, the user had already been there so they were pretty quick to find their way back. They then just searched the event that I asked for and it popped up immediately.
Suggestions
For the most part, it seemed like the user had a good interaction with the website and of the tasks I asked them to do, they accomplished them easily. The website is initially overwhelming as there is a lot of information on the home page. I think that once the user had a certain task to accomplish the website made more sense to them. They were able to search items easily and find the event that I asked them to look for. As I normally use the website every day for work or to look for things on the website myself, it is easy to forget that it is not second nature to everyone. I do think the site could make some changes to be a little more user friendly. The search box on the front page of the website only searches through the book catalog unless you change the feature on the side. I think that would hinder people from finding other library information that they needed from the site. I also think that when searching for a book, like my user recommended, there should be a way to select an author search. When you search an author the author’s books do come up but they have other items mixed in as well that fit the search but not the author. There are more filters when the search comes up but the user has already had to make a search. In my everyday use I also question why the e-materials like e-books and audio-books come up first. I think most users would be searching for the physical book to place a hold or to read the summary more than the e-material. Also, most of the e-materials do not have a book summary that would be helpful to the user in deciding whether to read the book or not.
Overall, I think that the Jacksonville Public Library website is user friendly. However, with minor changes and updates believe that it could be even better. The user was able to complete the tasks and was also able to work the website without a prompt.