1. 10 things we didn’t know about how students use EDS
Adele Robinson, Janine Bhandol. Alan Wheeler, Alan Bullimore
Academic Liaison Librarians, University of Bedfordshire

2. Usability Testing of EDS
Why did we do it?
How did we do it?
Practicalities
We wanted to find out how students used EDS when we weren’t there.
Students were asked to complete a pre-set exercise consisting of 8 questions and were offered £10 print credit for taking part.

3. Some of these were more surprising than others if we are quite honest…
Findings….
Some of these were more surprising than others if we are quite honest…

4. Students took longer to search than we thought they would….
The Ten things….. Number 10
Students took longer to search than we thought they would….

5. The most popular browser was Firefox
The Ten things….. Number 9
The most popular browser was Firefox

6. The Ten things….. Number 8
Students use a whole variety of routes to find the DISCOVER (EDS) Search Box

7. The number of questions answered correctly was variable
The Ten things….. Number 7
The number of questions answered correctly was variable

8. The Ten things….. Number 6
Students had problems with navigation features (missed new search instruction, date-slider, facets etc)

9. The Ten things….. Number 5
Students may not understand citations and how to extract the best words for searching (confusion about journal title and article title, entering place of publication as part of a book search)

10. The Ten things….. Number 4
Searches include lots of typing errors. Predictive results and suggestions were not used a great deal

11. The Ten things….. Number 3
Students could generally find the full-text link where it was available

12. There was confusion about formats (eg between print and e-book)
The Ten things….. Number 2
There was confusion about formats (eg between print and e-book)

13. The Ten things….. Number 1
Students showed perseverance in completing the worksheet Hawthorne effect?

14. A composite illustration of common search errors
Confusion between article title and journal title
Place of Publisher
Date range caused problems

15. It challenged our assumptions about how students search
In summary…
Enjoyable and worthwhile (especially one student who added humorous commentary into the Google search box)
It challenged our assumptions about how students search
It has changed the way we teach students
If you would like e-copies of the consent form, exercise sheet and participant information sheet or further details please get in touch with one of us: or

16. References
Fagan, J.C., Mandernach, M., Nelson, C.S., Paulo, J.R. & Saunders, G. (2012) ‘Usability test results for a discovery tool in an academic library’ Information Technology and Libraries, 31 (1), pp
Fry, A. & Rich, L. (2011) ‘Usability testing for e-resource discovery: how students find and choose e-e-resources using library web sites’ The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37 (5), pp
Gross, J. & Sheridan, L. (2011) ‘Web scale discover: the user experience’, New Library World, 112 (5/6), pp
Williams, S.C. & Foster, A.K. (2011) ‘Promise fulfilled? An EBSCO discovery service usability study’ Journal of Web Librarianship, 5 (3), pp