SK / AB / BF 1 Tailoring Claims Analysis to the design and deployment of digital libraries: a case study Suzette Keith 1 , Ann Blandford 2 & Bob Fields 1 1 Interaction Design Centre, Middlesex University, Bramley Road, London, N14 4YZ, U.K. {S.Keith, B. Fields}@mdx.ac.uk 2 UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP A.Blandford@ucl.ac.uk ABSTRACT In a sophisticated system such as a digital library, design decisions made early in the design process, or at different levels – from software architecture to information content – have consequences for the design of the user interface. There is a need for tools that help developers evaluate the usability of digital library interfaces as early as possible in the design process. The work reported here has aimed to achieve two main objectives: to develop an evaluation techniques that gives useful leverage on deep design issues for digital libraries, and to overcome the gulf between usability researchers and library practitioners, such that the technique developed is usable by practitioners. Claims analysis was identified as a suitable starting point for the work. This is a usability evaluation method that specifically examines the effect of the design on the user of the interface. Four linked case studies, each further developing the approach, have been conducted. These have involved developers of two large digital library projects. The resulting technique gives support to the activity of generating scenarios which describe the context of use and encapsulate models of human computer interaction and the information seeking process. The analysis of the design rationale makes use of these scenarios to walkthrough the user activity, to consider the effect on the users’ goals and understanding. Keywords Claims analysis, usability evaluation, design process, digital libraries INTRODUCTION Digital library design is a complex task for the developers, particularly because there are typically many different design specialists – from the developers of network protocols to librarians – involved at different stages of that process. Bates’ Cascade model [2] offers a unified model of the many layers of digital library design and use that interact with each other, including ‘the underlying network, hardware, information, database structures, search capabilities, interface design and social context’ [2]. The design of each of these layers can, individually or in combination, affect the user’s experience of the search activity and their success at retrieving information. Users find digital libraries hard to use, both because the interfaces are difficult to use and because the task of information seeking is difficult [4, 6,15]. Bates suggests that ‘The interface design should meet not only general criteria of good interface design, but should also draw on the expertise in information system design’ [2]. The work reported here aims to draw on this expertise to address the deeper usability design issues for digital libraries. By this, we mean issues that affect the qualities of the interaction between user and system, rather than simple surface-level issues to do with the way information is laid out on the screen. As discussed above, use of digital libraries is demanding in many different ways, and we are not aiming to address all aspects of user experience; for instance, the details of how users formulate queries is generally outside the scope of the approach being developed here. Rather, we are drawing on established Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) expertise, in particular established evaluation techniques, and adapting them to give leverage on the design of interaction between users and digital library features. Within the user interface design process, Gould [12,13] found that an iterative design-test-redesign cycle is essential to effective usability engineering. Usability evaluation methods have an important part to play by analyzing the intrinsic features and principles of usability. The shared goal of usability