Determination of user interface of the Persian Databases (Magiran& Science Information Database)

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the user interface of Magiran& SID databases to define their compatibility to Nielsen criteria, and the fundamental problems of user interface based on expert user view. This applied research has been carried out based on a heuristics evaluation. Five experts/academicians in knowledge and information science, who were selected through a theoretical sampling and accessible approach, evaluated the aforementioned databases by utilizing a checklist including 10 Nielsen main components and 115 sub-components. For each component was considered severity rating. Multiplying the score of each component in severity rating were analyzed in excel. Finally for each principal component was calculated the sum and the percentage of scores. Results showed that the Magiran database could obtain 239.5 scores and SID database got 167.75 out of 402 scores of the sub-components. Furthermore findings explain that the level of compatibility between Magiran database with 10 component of Nielsen is 59.73 (slightly more than average), and is 43.65 in the SID database (less than average). Among the 10 components of Nilsson which studied, in Magiran database element of Consistency and Standards showed more compatibility with the criteria in compliance with 90.5 percent of criteria, and the element of Flexibility and Minimalist Design in compliance with 9.7 percent showed minimum compatibility. In SID database the element of Match between System and the Real World showed maximum compatibility through obtaining 84.2 points, and the element of Help users Recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors showed minimum compatibility with a score of zero.