'Users expected highlighted terms to extend their current search': ReScript querying issue 4

Page section
Results

Heuristic
Learnability

Description
Users expected to be able to click on a highlighted term and have all results for that term appear. They were surprised to have search symbols appear instead.

Impact severity
Medium

Recommend
Remove search symbols and create an instantaneous link to the appropriate search filter from highlighted text.

Examples
To find all instances of “Richardson”, users currently hover over the text “Richardson” and then have to choose either the blue circle or red triangle search option.

Figure 4—1: although explanations were provided at the head of the page, the difference between UNION and INTERSECT meant nothing to historians

Quantitative measure
Click where you would expect to add “Richardson” to your current search.

Actual question
Click where you would expect to add "Richardson" to your current search.

Initial click test result ('before')
September 2011: 89 responses.

Figure 4—2: Before

Development change

Inclusion of a calendar function in the first sidebar enables categories of marked-up information to be presented alongside the original transcript, acting as an informal digest of the type, language and style of the content (e.g. http://www.rescript.org/article.aspx?p=2&a=43).

Figure 4—3: A calendar function helps the user navigate the document – each entry is clickable and highlights instances of it in the main text section itself. Those highlighted areas also become direct hyperlinks to the search engine

Follow-up click test result ('after')

November 2011: 330 responses.

Figure 4—4: After

Reflections
The most correct answer to this question, i.e. ‘Richardson’ in the surnames list, appeared so far down the page when viewed in the actual test format that users were not able to see it without scrolling down. However, in spite of this, there were still a large number of clicks at the bottom centre of the page, indicating that although they could not actually see the surname ‘Richardson’ in the sidebar, a great many users still recognised that they needed to navigate further down the page in order to find it in the list of surnames.

Bruce Tate, Project Manager
Donna Baillie, Project Officer