Page layout

Colour scheme

There are approximately 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women that are colour blind (Nielsen & Loranger, 2006).

Therefore, the CPL website should instantly

improve the colour scheme since it uses green text on red background that users who have colour blindness cannot read.

Splash pages

One of the TPL evaluators suggested that the TPL website should have a splash page to divide users into specific pages, such as English, Japanese pages and the pages for the elderly. In fact, it is not a good navigational page if a splash screen offers users a choice of three places to go, because all options should be provided on the Home page (Nielsen & Loranger, 2006).

VI. Limitations

Even though the method of HE is quick, effective, and economical, it still has a number of disadvantages and limitations in the research.

Does not involve users

The main disadvantage of HE is not involved users provide feedbacks about the experiences of using the interface. This then depends on experts’ knowledge and experience (Jordan, cited in George, 2008).

The issues of evaluators

The 10 evaluators are from Taiwan and the United States, so there are a number of limitations on designing the evaluation form and when they would conduct their evaluation.

Firstly, the evaluation form was translated into Mandarin for Taiwanese evaluators, and the design of task scenarios also needed to be adapted to different situations for both websites by changing a number of questions. Therefore, the variable factors may affect the process of the evaluations and results. Moreover, the translation between English and Mandarin could imply different meanings.

Secondly, the whole process of evaluations was carried out online in different places. It was impossible to brief the procedures and obtain feedback face to face. The experimenter could not answer evaluators’ questions or be given hints via an online evaluation (Neilson, 1993). After they finished the evaluation, it was hard to obtain their explanations if the experimenter has any questions with respect to the comments they made.

Finally, the evaluators may have different cognition and understanding of HE to conduct an evaluation although they have similar backgrounds. Moreover, the Taiwanese evaluators used to work for TPL so they are already familiar with the website target but the American evaluators are not. Also, the websites were separately assessed by two groups of evaluators, so the evaluators did not compare the two websites.

VII. Conclusions

One of the aims of the research is to examine whether the objectives of both public libraries have met the provision of services on the interfaces of the websites.

Both of the websites stress the importance of usability, so most of goals have been met according to the results of HE although they still have some problems of usability that need to be improved.

The TPL is placing emphasis on strengthening Internet security and decreasing the occurrence of errors, but it has minor problems on error preventions and recoveries. The information services for all types of users are also promoted on the interface of the website, such as for seniors and people who have visionary problems.

However, the mission of providing information via mobile technology still needs enhancing and is not found on the website.

On the other hand, the information architecture of the website has proved to meet the goals of CPL strategies. It also meets the goals of being well-organised and easy-to-use in an accessible manner even though minor or cosmetic problems still exist.

Therefore, the value of HE discovery is approved according to the process and results since it is indeed a cheap, quick and effective method. Also, it is appropriate to invite five evaluators to conduct a HE.

However, it would be helpful that all of evaluators conducted the HE for both of the websites, so they could compare the websites with each other and then make more impartial scores and comments.

Based on the numbers of usability problems found, it is interesting that most usability problems are cosmetic: 18 items in TPL and 13 items in CPL. The websites do not have to fix them until have the time or budget. Moreover, the minor problems mainly are in the way of presentation.

Therefore, it is easy to deal with these problems by using plain language and making messages clear.

The total number of major problems is four, which only three of them being serious within the TPL and CPL websites. The problems are that the menu has too many layers and the information architecture in the TPL website is complicated. There is also no function for metasearch in the CPL website; whilst the site map is an assistant tool for utility navigation and could be replaced by searching the website instead.

Overall, the CPL website is better than TPL website according to the results of HE.

Not only is the information architecture clearer but also there are fewer usability problems. The TPL has more usability problems but it is not difficult to cope with them. Generally, both of the websites have efficient and effective usability of interfaces.

Finally, the comprehension of the research is pleasing. The results and recommendations could become a set of usability principles for other metro public libraries for inspecting the usability of websites during the process of designing or redesigning them. However, if there is no limitation of cost and time, the targets of metro public libraries could be broadened to more than five from different countries, such as Japan, Britain, Canada and China.

Also, it is possible to invite evaluators who are bilingual, so they could compare each website and make impartial and convincing scores and comments. Therefore, the results will be reliable as a benchmark of assessing a metro public library website.

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