Usability Testing of the HIVE: A System for Dynamic Access to Multiple Controlled Vocabularies for Automatic Metadata Generation

This paper reports on a usability study testing the HIVE Vocabulary Server (HIVE). The overall research goal was to identify usability issues needing attention in order to improve the effectiveness the HIVE system. This usability study compared results for two targeted user groups: librarians and scientists. The study employed a formal usability testing approach and formative evaluation. Usability test results for the first build of HIVE were positive. Librarians indicated that HIVE is a useful tool and could assist their work. Scientists responded positively about HIVE's support for identifying a greater selection of relevant terms describing their data. The main usability problems identified were related to the absence of adequate information via the HIVE interface. These include the absence of descriptive information about individual HIVE supported vocabularies; lack of evidence about the status of vocabularies during an interaction (was not clear to users if a vocabulary was, closed or opened during a session); and a lack of information indicating the success (or failure) regarding document upload. Recommendations for addressing these problems are presented in the discussion, and may guide further development of HIVE Vocabulary Server