Stanford Digital Library Project

SIDL-WP-1997-0069

NASA DLITE User Evaluation Study

Trace Wax

trace@ccrma.stanford.edu

Abstract: A user evaluation study of the Digital Library Integrated Task Environment was performed at NASA in August 1997. Nine researchers and two librarians were given a brief tutorial of DLITE and then observed using DLITE to perform a task that would help them in their work. The study showed a strong demand for DLITE among researchers and librarians, and that they were able to use DLITE to perform tasks that aided them in their research. Technical concerns limited the usefulness of DLITE: slowness, latency, problems with Java, several bugs, a few user interface problems, and especially, the lack of on-line help. Most users agreed that if these problems were fixed, DLITE would be a very useful tool for them. Even in spite of these problems, several people at NASA have become regular users of DLITE. A follow-up memory study was performed, in which users were observed using DLITE two weeks after their initial exposure to it. The memory study showed that users remembered how to use the simpler user interface elements, but forgot the complex ones, and that users liked DLITE much more after having been exposed to it for a while.

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This paper was created on: 8/22/97 and last revised on:8/23/1997

Author's Comments: A user study of DLITE done at NASA. Preliminary draft.

Status: PRIVATE

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Revision History

Version	Format	Date	Comments
1	HTML	8/22/1997	A user study of DLITE done at NASA. Preliminary draft.