An analysis of User Interface Elements Supporting Information Seeking Behavior Based on Elli's Model of Infor,ation Seeking

Introduction/ Scientific databases are one of the most important and useful resources. Users retrieve the needed information through the user interface of such databases. This study aimed at evaluating the understandability of the elements of the interface environments of Ebsco, Proquest, ScienceDirect databases. This study was conducted through a mixed method. Data gathering instruments included checklists, log files, and thinking-aloud protocols. The population included 30 graduate and post graduate students in two majors, Humanities/Social science, and Basic Sciences /Engineering at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Descriptive and analytical statistics were used for analysing the quantitative data and content analysis was applied to qualitative data. Findings showed that most elements of the user interface are understandable to the students. Users’ awareness of the elements in the interfaces was also higher than the average. In addition, all students used the interface elements objectively based on Ellis’ information seeking behavior model. The results of testing the hypotheses revealed that there was no significant difference the students’ information seeking behavior in terms of the features of Ellis’s model (starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring and extracting).