Análise da usabilidade e da arquitetura da informação do Repositório Institucional da UFRN

Abstract

In order to identify the possible problems of usability and information architecture of the institutional repositories, the case study of the Institutional Repository of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte was chosen. Therefore, during the survey, it was questioned if the information architecture and the interface design of the UFRN Institutional Repository provide usability with graduate students, undergraduate students and librarians so as to meet the institutional interest to promote transparency and open access to the information produced by the pieces of research carried out at the university. As research hypothesis, it was established that the information architecture of the UFRN Institutional Repository interface, version 1.8.1, disadvantage usability in performing the tasks by system user groups. Data collection was carried out by applying the techniques of Cooperative Evaluation with ten graduate students and Usability Testing of the UFRN/ IR system, with a representative group of system users: ten librarians and ten undergraduate students. The participants performed representative tasks – “Search” and “Submission” of a scientific article. Besides the evaluation techniques, the Usability Testing participants answered a social and demographic questionnaire as well as the satisfaction’s questionnaire, adapted of Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction – QUIS (SHNEIDERMAN, 1998). From the results obtained by means of the Cooperative Evaluation with graduate students and the Usability Testing with undergraduate students and librarians, problems of usability and information architecture were found in the Institutional Repository, such as: labeling, font size, nomenclature of the buttons, lack of the system feedback. After identifying the problems pointed out by the users, severity levels were assigned and a list of ergonomic recommendations was outlined. The redesign of the UFRN Institutional Repository interface about the areas related to the tasks presented in the research, that considers the aspects of usability and information architecture, mentioned above, will contribute to an improvement in the access and visibility of information.