Overview

At the request of ArchivesSpace Development team member, Susan Pyzynski (Harvard University), Emilie Hardman (Houghton Library, Harvard University) conducted a usability testing session on several areas of concern for the development of ASpace.

Tests were conducted at Houghton Library with six participants recruited by the Harvard Student Agencies. Participants were senior undergraduates or graduate students at Harvard University focused on work within the arts, humanities, and/or social sciences. Two participants could be classified as very experienced archives users, three had some significant-moderate archival experience with class assignments and personal research interests, and one participant had never made use of an archive or special collection.  

The Test

In this section of the session, participants were presented with a paper version of the ArchivesSpace homepage guided with questions and prompts to determine the appropriateness and applicability of functions and labels. At the time of testing, the homepage appeared in the following form:

For the purpose of the session, a screenshot of the interface was edited to remove potentially distracting QA-specific elements, such at the brand.welcome prompt and the "Welcome to..." message. Because the session was conducted with a paper version of the main landing page, the dropdown menus were not available to participants, so the options were presented separately. Participants were encouraged to discuss their understanding of various elements on the page and to detail their expectations and potential behaviors. They were also offered markers to edit the page, adding elements, noting questions, etc. The page as presented to participants took the following form:

The conversations were transcribed and the paper homepages analyzed with the help of assistance of Simmons intern, Anna Speth.

Findings and Recommendations