A usability study of taxonomy visualisation user interfaces in digital repositories

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse user interfaces for search and collection visualisation and navigation from a usability perspective. The final aim is to offer repository owners a scientific basis to support their decisions when they have to choose an interface that can really help users to effectively locate and visualise resources over large digital collections. Design/methodology/approach – This HCI study is divided into two parts: perception and usability. The first one analysed three perceptual abilities required to use interfaces: attention, retention of information and understanding. The second one was run on an ad hoc generated collection including more than 40,000 European digital resources collected and classified according to a given branch of knowledge in the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. Findings – Although visual interfaces proved useful for certain tasks related to resource discovery and search, and despite the overall good general user opinion, the authors found it necessary to conduct...

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