On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Rosenthal, Danielle <[email protected]> wrote: > This was a question (or task) on our last web usability study. And yes, even > though our page clearly stated "Enter database name here" above the search > box in big bold letters, we watched as those instructions were ignored by > many new users unfamiliar with the system.
If I remember our old usability work from back in the day, a big part of the problem is that the term "database" isn't well-understood. Even the concept has been tricky, in my experience. I remember explaining to one researcher that they're "like Google Scholar, except they might have different articles and are hard to use." Since starting work in a lab, I've come to question the importance of finding article databases (at least in this field). Peoples' search strategies seem to be: 1: Google Scholar 2: Pubmed Cheers, -Nate
