“Nej, men jag söker väl tills jag hittar”: En studie av discoveryverktyget Summon utifrån ett användarperspektiv.

Abstract

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how students at Högskolan i Borås experience the web-scale discovery service Summon, based on the theoretical model of “The Five Dimensions of Usability”, defined by Whitney Quesenbery. The study aims to answer the following research questions: How do the students execute search assignments in the Summon interface? How intuitive and easy to navigate is the system from a user perspective? What are the students’ opinions about Summon, regarding usability? Five students with varying information seeking skills are asked to perform search assignments during controlled observation, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings are presented in the context of previous research and show correspondence with the results of related studies. Our results show that users are comfortable in navigating the Summon interface, but that more user education is desirable for them to be able to fully take advantage of the service provided.