Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Usability Testing To Improve Research Data Services, Rachel E. Volentine, Amber Owens, Carol Tenopir, Mike Frame

DataONE Sociocultural and Usability & Assessment Working Groups

Usability refers to the ease and accessibility of a system. Usability testing seeks to study how users interact with a system in order to improve the users’ experience and satisfaction in achieving their objectives with the system. Usability testing is an important metric for improving a library’s online services, including research data services. Libraries can help make research data available by providing repositories and data curation services for researchers to house their collected data. Providing services throughout the science data life cycle (i.e. plan, collect, share, and preserve) is important for producing higher quality research, expanding its impact, and data …