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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usability of the National Library of Turkey website developed for all citizens in the country to retrieve information available in a wide range of areas.

The evaluation performed by 57 undergraduate university students involved the identification and analysis of usability problems in the selected website. The assessment process was mainly based on Nielsen’s Heuristics. The data obtained in the evaluation process were enriched using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to conduct a more detailed analysis.

The participants identified many usability problems concerning the evaluated website and considered it as having low usability characteristics. The most violated heuristic item was found to be “consistency and standards” whereas the least violated heuristic item was “match between system and the real world.” The total number of the usability problems in heuristic evaluation correlated significantly and negatively with the SUS and the NPS results indicating that the more participants identified usability problems, the less they considered the website as usable and recommendable.

The participants were not usability experts, however they were selected from among the students who received the Human Computer Interaction course to ensure that they had sufficient information and experience concerning the evaluation of a website with heuristics. Besides, the study was limited to a small number of university students. The implication is that results of this study have potential to guide libraries, which plan to adapt themselves to the digital world by delivering web services, by addressing critical points influencing users’ points of views toward library websites and their usability evaluation result.

Depending on the changes in user habits regarding the retrieval of information, libraries have made considerable investments in web technologies to meet their users’ demands, and recently, digital libraries have begun to take over physical libraries. Users always need to perform tasks efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily when using websites. As one of the most crucial sources of digital materials, library websites are expected to have usable characteristics that satisfactorily meet user requirements. Therefore, the practical implication is that the findings of the study will guide designers, developers and practitioners in the development of library websites.

In the context of usability evaluation of digital libraries, this is the first study to analyze effects of usability problems identified by users during the heuristic inspection on their overall evaluation score and willingness to recommend the website to their friends or colleagues.

This study aims to evaluate the interface of the mobile Centralized Doctor Appointment System (CDAS), the largest mobile e-government health application developed in Turkey to allow citizens to make medical appointments at public hospitals.

A total of 40 information systems engineers took part in the study. The evaluation process was mainly based on Nielsen’s heuristics. The data obtained in the evaluation process were enriched using system usability scale to conduct a more detailed analysis.

Based on the findings, problems related to the usability of the evaluated mobile health application were identified. The most violated heuristic items were found to be “error prevention” and “user control and freedom”, whereas the least violated heuristic item was “consistency and standards”. The participants generally categorized the usability problems they identified as “minor” or “major” according to their severity.

As a developing country, Turkey has made considerable investment in mobile e-government applications in recent years. It is equally important that mobile e-government services provided by public institutions have features that make these applications effective, efficient and satisfying for citizens. Therefore, the usability of mobile health applications in government services needs to be researched to improve their effectiveness and guide authorities, practitioners and designers.

To document a library web site redesign from start to finish, with special attention and emphasis placed on process – what worked and what did not.

Documentation and techniques used in the redesign are discussed in depth, with special attention as to why these techniques were chosen, how they were integrated into the process, and what problems were encountered.

One of the biggest problems with a redesign is the political dimension and communication issues involved, rather than the technical problems. Deciding what testing methodology to use to gather patron input and using that input efficiently in the site design are also a challenging area.

Since this is a case study, some of the problems encountered may not be applicable to other libraries in different environments. At the same time, many of the findings relating to problems with communication are general and could apply to redesign efforts in a variety of environments.

It is hoped that this paper may serve as a foundation on which a more generic process for effecting a redesign can be developed, one that may apply to all or most redesigns in all or most libraries.

There are very few papers in the literature dealing with the process of managing a redesign – most focus on other aspects, such as skill sets or test findings.

Interactive storytelling is a powerful tool for improving children's development of essential skills and general knowledge. As an informal learning method, interactive storytelling provides life experience and promotes the use of vocabulary and communication skills. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, a storytelling tool was developed to help kindergarteners create stories. This tool included an instrument used to measure four characteristics of four‐ to five‐year‐old children: general knowledge, creativity, self‐confidence and between the children and the technology to assess a child's progress. Moreover, there is a pressing need to better understand and improve upon this educational innovation. Therefore, this paper proposed the child interactive storytelling (CIS) framework.

The developed interactive storytelling tool helped instructors as well as parents to perceive the child's progress through multiple use of the tool. Experiments indicated that teachers' evaluations of their children with those measured from the developed tool were aligned which indicates that the interactive storytelling tool is valid. Moreover, the proposed CIS framework for formalizing the design of interactive storytelling tools can be used in educational interventions for children.

The proposed CIS framework can guide both research and practice in the design, development and evaluation of effective and useful CIS environments.

The purpose of the paper is to present usability heuristics for the evaluation of public library web services.

Heuristics for library services are based on Nielsen's classical list of heuristics and results of previous usability research of library web services. A total of 15 public library web sites were evaluated on the basis of these applied heuristics. One part of the study was supported through usability tests. The results of these studies were utilized to evaluate the applied heuristics.

The applied heuristics are divided into three categories: heuristics critical from the usability viewpoint; heuristics concerning major problems; and heuristics connected to minor usability problems but still important and concerning conventions of web design. The use of the heuristics and the results they give are evaluated to provide a basis for their use in future.

The applied heuristics lists have been tested in two different studies, and the combined list based on them has so far been utilized in practical evaluation, but has not been formally tested.

The heuristics for library web services presented in this paper can be applied to usability evaluation of public library web services.

Library web sites should be user friendly, because the services are meant for all citizens. The applied heuristics for public library web services provide a starting point for usability evaluation that can be continued with other methods.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated list of heuristics and an information architecture (IA) framework for the heuristic evaluation of the IA of academic library websites as well as an evaluation framework with practical steps on how to conduct the evaluation.

A set of 14 heuristics resulted from an integration of existing usability principles from authorities in the field of usability. A review of IA literature resulted in a framework for dividing academic library websites into six dialogue elements. The resulting heuristics were made applicable to academic library websites through the addition of recommendations based on a review of 20 related studies.

This study provides heuristics, a framework and workflow guidelines that can be used by the various evaluators of academic library websites, i.e. library staff, web developers and usability experts, to provide recommendations for improving its usability.

The focus of the usability principles is the evaluation of the IA aspects of websites and therefore does not provide insights into accessibility or visual design aspects.

The main problem that is addressed by this study is that there are no clear guidelines on how to apply existing usability principles for the evaluation of the IA of academic library websites.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss heuristic evaluation as a method for evaluating e‐learning courses and applications and more specifically to investigate the applicability and empirical use of two customized e‐learning heuristic protocols.

Two representative e‐learning heuristic protocols were chosen for the comparative analysis. These protocols augment the “traditional” heuristic sets so as to cover technology‐enhanced learning properties. Two reviewers that have considerable experience in usability evaluation as well as in e‐learning were involved in this comparative analysis. Coverage, distribution and redundancy were employed as three basic criteria for conducting the evaluation

The main results of the study indicate that both heuristic protocols exhibit wide coverage of potential usability problems. The distribution of usability problems is uneven to a large number of heuristics for both heuristic sets, which reveals that some heuristics are more general than others.

This study shows the empirical application of two heuristic protocols in a usability evaluation of e‐learning applications. Furthermore, it provides a comparison of the two heuristic sets according to a set of criteria and provides a first set of suggestions regarding further development and validation of these heuristic sets.

The present study aims to review the literature concerning Digital Libraries (DLs) and user interfaces in order to identify, determine, and suggest evaluation criteria for a DLs user interface. Accordingly, this study's objectives are threefold: explore which criteria exert a significant relationship with the DLs user interface; identify a set of criteria that appears to be useful for evaluating DLs user interface; and determine evaluation criteria that have more frequency and occurrence in the related texts reviewed.

To do it, first, identifying related texts was necessary. Consequently, keywords such as “DLs user interface evaluation”,” DLs user interfaces”, “DLs evaluation”, “DLs usability”, “user interface evaluation”, “DLs research”, “web sites user interface evaluation”, “user interface standards”, and the like have been searched in the web as well as in some leading databases including Emerald, Proquest, SagePub, ScienceDirect, LISA, ERIC, ACM, and Springer. After identifying and accessing more than 100 evaluative works and some related articles, theoretical and empirical, nearly 50 sources were chosen for final examination.

After reviewing related texts, three major categories are identified: user interface and DLs; DLs and usability; and other studies related to user interface; each one of three identified categories has its own subcategories. Additionally, 22 evaluation criteria for assessing DLs interface have been identified.

The review does not claim to be comprehensive.

Hopefully, criteria such as feedback, ease of use, match between system and the real world, customization, user support, user workload, interaction, compatibility, visibility of system status, user experience, flexibility, and accessibility which have been less considered should be applied more in future, particularly user‐oriented, studies. Furthermore, it is expected that criteria mentioned here could help related bodies pay more attention to the evaluation of EISs, especially DLs interface.

It can be said that this study has contributed to the research into the evaluation of DL interface.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodological usability evaluation approach for e‐commerce websites in developing countries.

A multi‐faceted usability evaluation of three Jordanian e‐commerce websites was used, where three usability methods (user testing, heuristic evaluation and web analytics) were applied to the sites.

A four‐step approach was developed to facilitate the evaluation of e‐commerce sites, mindful of the advantages and disadvantages of the methods used in identifying specific usability problems.

The approach was developed and tested using Jordanian users, experts and e‐commerce sites. The study compared the ability of the methods to detect problems that were present, however, usability issues not present on any of the sites could not be considered when creating the approach.

The approach helps e‐commerce retailers evaluate the usability of their websites and understand which usability method(s) best matches their need.

This research proposes a new approach for evaluating the usability of e‐commerce sites. A novel aspect is the use of web analytics (Google Analytics software) as a component in the usability evaluation in conjunction with heuristics and user testing.