The Need to A Friendly User Interface

Used to Access Online Catalog:

A Comparative study between two OPAC
Interfaces;
University of Pittsburgh OPAC Interface &
Carnegie Mellon University OPAC Interface
By:

Essam Mansour
Pittsburgh, 2000
 Supervised by Prof.:

Arlene G. Taylor 
Introduction

No doubt that the world has witnessed a great and big

revolution in the information technology in the last 20
years. And this has required a respectful
understanding for the end-user needs and behavior as
they are considered the real aim of creating and
developing of this technology. The programs
designers, developers, and vendors feel a great
responsibility towards these users who are using their
products (programs). In other words, software
developers need to expand their focus beyond
functional requirements to include the behavioral
needs of the end-users. What users really want from
these people is not only to build applications that
meet their needs of information but also to use these
applications e friendly and easily. So, the matter is
how to make applications usable without the need to
read complicated manuals or to receive a hard and
 Defining the User Interface (UI)

The user interface (UI) in its simplest definitions is

the point of contact between human needs and the
computational, data-storage and communication
capabilities of a computing device (Frank, 1995).
Dumas defined human-computer interface “the words
and symbols that people see on the computer screen;
the content and layout of displays; the procedures
used to enter, store, and display information; and the
organizational structure of the interface as a whole”
(1988, p. 68.)
Understanding the user
(Who is, What he/she expects,
….
It is important to understand the user and his/her
needs of information and what he/she can expect
from the library to offer. If the users are not familiar
with the use of automated library system, the library
should make some training to help them how to
understand and deal with the system. Hackos and
Redish (1998) stated that we greatly need to study
users because the more we know about them, the
better we can design for them. The users are people
with likes and dislikes, habits and skills, education
and training that they bring into practicing whenever
they use any computer system. Any automated
catalogue system should put into consideration who
the user is, how he/she thinks about the machine and
the OPAC, what he/she waits expects from them, and
what he/she needs to be adapted to deal with the
 Why is Interface Design is Important?

• Ambler (1998) answered this question by stating the

following several reasons:
• 1.       First of all the more intuitive the user interface
the easier it is to use, and the easier it is to use the
cheaper it is.
• 2.       The better the user interface the easier it is to
train people to use it, reducing training costs.
• 3.       The better the user interface the less help
people will need to use it, reducing support costs.
• 4.      The better the user interface the more users will
like to use it, increasing their satisfaction with the
work that is done.

• We can see from these answers that any application

that is ambiguous, complicated, and difficult to use,
the user simply will not use it.
 Designing the user interface
• Hildreth (1995) tried to articulate the principles and
goals which should guide the design and
development of the online catalog interface. These
two principles are:
• 1.       The first principle is that the online catalog
system should
• never permit a user's search attempt to fail to
retrieve one or more bibliographic records for review
and action. Many searches in existing online catalogs
fail to retrieve even a single record, and most online
catalogs offer little or no assistance to the searcher
when this result occurs. The assumption behind this
principle is that something in a heterogeneous online
catalog database might satisfy the request to some
degree, or serve, even in its rejection by the user, to
supply useful information that can be used to further
the search.
• A second principle is never assumed the display of a
bibliographic record is the end of a search, merely to
be selected or rejected, then "set aside."
Review of the Literature
In a great study of what screens should look like and
making an effective OPAC screens, Shires and Olszak
(1992) display the most basic principles and present
these with rationale and practical checklists. They
discussed the physical screens and general
principles; menus, commands, inquiry screens, and
messages. Crawford (1992) presents principles for
the design of OPAC displays accompanied with
chiklests. Also, Matthews (1987) presents detailed
guidelines for the design of OPAC screens, including
bibliographic displays. Hildreth (1995) tried to
investigate user-interface features of ten some OPAC
systems using also checklist methodology. She
focused mainly on the great role of Graphic User
Interface (GUI) and asked “What Do GUIs Bring to
OPACs?” she answered this questions by stating the
features of GUI like Hot buttons for activating
functions, Sizeable, moveable windows,…etc.
Research Questions

The research question comes to determine why this

paper and what it is intended to do. The research
question is:
•     To what extent the design of graphic user interface
(GUI) increases/decreases the use of online public
access catalog (OPAC) in the academic library?
 Research Methodology
Data were collected from two universities (university of
Pittsburgh & Carnegie Mellon university) having two
  different and variant OPAC interface. A questionnaire
was distributed on 20 students students taking classes
  at both Pitt. & CMU universities and of course using
their OPAC interface. I got 11 answers from these 20
students..! The 11 people answers to the questionnaire
came from 11 students; 6 of them at Master degree and
the rest of them (5) at Ph. D degree. 5 of them speak in
the English language (3 Ph. D and 2 MA) 2 of them
speak in the Spanish language (Ph. D). 1 of them speaks
in the Arabic language (MA). 1 of them speaks in the
Turkish language (Ph. D). 2 of them specks in the French
language (MA “their origin is Arabic). All of these
students are 10 men and one woman (this selection is
not on purpose at all); and also I think, to some extent,
the gender does not appear greatly in the use of OPAC
and deal with its interface. In other words, it does not
∀• All 11 students (100%) are graduate students (5 ph. D
45.45 % and 6 MA 54.54%).
∀ •    6 of these 11 students (54.54 %) are from Pitt.
University and the rest of them (5) (45.45 %) are from
Carnegie Mellon University.
∀ • 10 0f these 11 student (90.9%) use both OPAC
interface regularly during their classes at both Pitt. & CMU.
∀ •      All 11 students (100%) feel that OPAC interface at CMU
is great friendly in use (more helping commends, more java
screens, and explanatory icons and more help screens for
each page). Only 7 of the 11 students (63%) feel that OPAC
interface at Pitt. is friendly.
∀ •          10 of these 11 students (90.90%) use the roman
characters without any difficulties (as they are their mother
tongue)and the rest of them (1) (9.09%) complain about
these characters and he asks if he can find some help like
windows specialized for translations from the languages in
roman characters and the vise versa. or even translating
programs to do that.
∀ •           All the 11 students depend on OPAC to meet their
educational needs of information.
∀ •      Only one of these 11 students (9.09 %) that his
language does not appear in roman characters.
∀ •    All the student using the OPAC at both Pitt & CMU fell
• All of the 11 student 100%) prefer to use some database
(some of them pointed to ERIC, EBSCO and lISA) and
some search engines (Yahoo, Altavista, Hotbot, Google, and
Exie). There are some reason for that such as:
– -        These tools (search engines and databases) display a lot
relevant results that can match up their queries.
– - They have a lot of similar pages that can give more help,
varities and support to their search.
- They are more organized.
– - They have more than one media (like video and audio)
helping display information in more one attractive way.
– _ Some ways/tools but OPAC such as search engine allow
the user to use natural language and avoid the ghost of
Controlled Vocabulary and the Library of Congress Subject
Heading (LCSH) or of Sears Subject Heading (SSH) and their
rules that they need carefully to be understood.

•       9 of these 11 student (81%) asked for some improvement in

both OPAC interface especially in Pitt OPAC. These
improvement like:
1.     More screen help. For each function, the user can ask help;
not general help as in Pitt.
2.      Some translating programs to help translate the interface
commands and
• Conclusion and recommendation

• I know well that each library has its own system and its
specific users. Each library tries to do its best to meet the
needs of its users, especially the educational needs. The
automated library system, therefore, should:
• 1.          make a lot of survies about how to make the user
accept and deal with the system interface and to
determine exactly the variant and different
perceptions of the users.
• 2.     explain how its system works to its users in simple
rules and short sentences.
• 3.      deal with both novices and experts students on equal
footing…!
• 4.     not make users confused with some words/commands
that have more than one meaning or with some
abbreviated words (like MeSH in Pitt. OPAC interface;
what does it mean to the user especially the novice one?)
that they are not familiar with, especially for the novice
students.
• 5.            organize the interface screen according to the
“30Percent” Rule
• 6.      not waste space with no importance signs or words.
 8.         join the OPAC system dictionaries helping the users to
know some difficult words and spelling.
9. not return any query of any user using the system. I t can
design programs that accept any queries or match these
queries to the most close results.
10. Offer a lot of Help screens as they provide assistance to
users to understand the system efficiently.
11.    Prompt messages that help the user, especially if he/she
makes errors, to be know exactly what his error and what
he/she should do to solve it.
12.       Make an interface that is more attractive and colorful
than character-based interfaces to make OPAC searching
both easier and more richly interactive. 
13. find substitute solutions for displaying the library material
(the bibliographic records) in more one language not
only in roman characters language…because I think now
the library moves towards the universality. So,
it should serve all people those in different
languages and variant cultures.
  OPAC has been the most common tool for library users to
get their needs of information, especially the educational
needs such as answers to a class assignment or making a
paper…etc,.. So, it is obvious that if we give a respectful
attention towards creating a well-designed user interface,
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http://www.ambysoft.com/userInterfaceDesign.pdf
 Crawford, Walt (1992). Starting Over: Current Issues in
Online Catalog User Interface Design. Information Technology
and Libraries. 11 (1), 62-76.
 Hackos, Joann T. & Redish, Janice C. (1998). User and Task
Analysis Interface Design.New York : Hohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.
 Hildreth, Charles R. (1995). [WWW]. Availble:
http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v6/n5/hild6n5.html
 http://www.netspace.org/~cmw/illus/part6.html
 Lynch, Patrick J. (1994). [WWW]. Available (
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/papers/gui1.html
 Matthews, Joseph R. (1987). Suggested Guidelines for Screen
Layouts and Design of Online Catalogs. Library Trends 35,
555-70.
 
Olfman, Lorne & Satzinger, John W. (1998). Interface
Consistency Across End-User Applications: The Effects on
Mental Models. Journal of Management Information Systems
14 (4), 167-194.
 Shires, N. Lee & Olszak, L. P. (1992). What Our Screens
Should Look Like: AN Introduction to Effective OPAC Screens.
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