Evaluation of the User Interface of Iranian Information & Documentation Centre Dissertation Database with Special Reference to Library and Information Science

This paper presents the results of a heuristic-based user interface evaluation of Iranian Information & Documentation Dissertations Database. Five library and information specialists were used as evaluators in two different stages of the research. At the first stage, they are asked to review each element of the interface and judge its compliance with a checklist principles; and at the second stage, they were asked to rate the severity of each problem found at the first stage. The results of the study indicate that 35.63 percent of the checklist principles were observed. In addition, among seven areas covered by the checklist, bibliographic information, with considering 100 percent of principles, stands at the top; and operational control with 10 percent is at the bottom. Furthermore, in a 0 to 4 rating scale, the highest and the lowest severity rating of difficulties belong to access points (3.71) and screen display (2.50) respectively. The total severity rating of all areas came to 3.17. The results also demonstrated that there are, not only numerous problems in the user interface of this database, but also most of them (about 3/4) are major and catastrophic problems.