Designing A Simple Resource Search UI for the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)

Weatherley, John and Weingart, Troy (2000) Designing A Simple Resource Search UI for the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE).

Abstract

The focus of our project was to build functional prototype of the discovery system user interface (UI) for the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). The prototype had two goals: first to show a proof of concept for the DLESE project and second to provide an initial search and discovery implementation that can be extended to include multiple heterogeneous data collections in future iterations. Our design goal was to ensure that user’s desired information be easy and convenient to discover via the UI. We focused on three components with this goal in mind: first a keyword search designed so that the most relevant information was returned at the top of the results list. Second a “browse” search that provided a summary of the resource topology in one simple view. Third a clear and concise presentation of search results that allow users to evaluate desired information quickly. Once the prototype was up and running we conducted user tests. The results of these tests and our recommendations for future iterations of the DLESE search engine are outlined at the end of this report.