User Interface capabilities of Saman Library Sistem of Iran Public Libraries Foundation based on Nilsson's principles

evaluation of the user interface of the management system of Iran Public Libraries Foundation (Saman) is the main aim of the paper. Saman is a newly developed web based and integrated library software that seemingly works as a library OPAC.
This research is an applied study and tries to investigate the usability standards of Saman website through heuristic evaluation method based on ten key principles of Jakob Nielsen, one of the most well-known methods to evaluate the user interface of information systems. In order to heuristic evaluation, four librarians of Iran public Libraries Foundation who had the necessary experience in this regard were used as evaluator.
Findings: results indicated that the component "Match between system and the real world" has the highest rating (87.5%), and the component "User control and freedom" had the lowest (29%). Also results of the study suggest that from the perspective of evaluators almost all problems related to different components of Saman user interface are minor problems. Exceptionally, the component "User control and freedom", seems to have been a fundamental problem of Saman system on the basis of the majority of the evaluators.
Originality/value: this research is valuable because of its contribution to show “user control and freedom” as a main problem of Saman system that should be regarded as a need for refinement.