UIV Ongoing Activities: Collection of User Requirements - Questionnaire Formulation

Tiziana Catarci provides an update on ongoing activity into the approach adopted by the User Interfaces and Visualization (UIV) Cluster to gather user requirements.

Introduction

While it is understood that user requirements are a central plank of most successful designs, some thought also has to be given to the effective collection of those requirements. As mentioned in the User Interface and Visualization Cluster report, activity on this aspect of planning and design has already begun. This update provides a brief look at the approach adopted. The general aim is to obtain different perspectives on a digital library and thus flesh out the list of options for implementation that will need to be considered.

It is our intention to analyze methodically all the aspects and phases pertaining to the development and the usage of a DL system. The analysis will focus not only on the DL end-user, for it will also need to take into account other DL stakeholders such as librarians, content providers and maintainers. The DL life cycle will be related to both functional and non-functional requirements.

Questionnaire Formulation

As mentioned above, one of the main objectives of this cluster is to collect and analyze user requirements in order to relate them to the different research perspectives and options for technical implementation within a digital library.

In this effort, various colleagues within the cluster were asked to formulate a questionnaire as it related to their task area. In particular, task leaders were assigned responsibility to deliver a questionnaire relevant to their activities, namely:

Task 1: Provision of an Empirical Basis
Task 2: Digital Library Life Cycle Support
Task 3: Characterisation of Digital Library Users
Task 4: Context Consideration and Exploitation

Based on the four questionnaires, the cluster came up with:

a refined and integrated questionnaire for DL end-users
a refined and integrated questionnaire for DL stakeholders

1. Integrated questionnaire for digital library end-users:

This questionnaire has been designed for the express purpose of gathering data from digital library end-users. The questionnaire for digital library end-users consists of four parts:

Part 1 collects data regarding users' background and demographics;
Part 2 solicits data pertaining to users' current experience with digital library services;
Part 3 collects data pertaining to the functional requirements of the digital library from the perspective of end-users; and
Part 4 contains questions for collecting data regarding the non-functional requirements of the digital library, again from the end-users' viewpoint.

2. Integrated questionnaire for digital library stakeholders:

This questionnaire is intended to solicit input from digital library stakeholders. The questionnaire has therefore been designed with content that is relevant to the stakeholders such as librarians, archaeologists, content providers, service providers, software developers, etc.

The questionnaire for the stakeholders is made up of five parts. In particular:

Part 1 collects data pertaining to the stakeholders' background and demographics;
Part 2 gathers data regarding the stakeholders' current experience with digital libraries;
Part 3 collects data pertaining to the functional requirements of the digital library from the stakeholders' point of view;
Part 4 gathers data regarding the non-functional requirements of the digital library from the stakeholders' perspective; and
Part 5 collects data pertaining to content life cycle and the user interface of the digital library.

The integrated questionnaires have been set up for online collection and processing of data. The cluster is currently enlisting appropriate digital library end-users and stakeholders. The questionnaires can be found at http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~delos

Author Details

Tiziana Catarci
Cluster Leader
User Interfaces and Visualization Cluster (UIV)
Università degli Studi di Roma "La Spienza"
E-mail: catarci@dis.uniroma1.it
url: http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~catarci/
Telephone: +39-06-4991 8331
Fax: +39-06-4991 8331

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