Usability Tests
ARTstor Beta Test for UVa Faculty
General Issues
Ask the participant to briefly describe their experience in working with digital
images-their use (or lack thereof) of digital images, barriers to use; what tools
they have used that have worked well or not and why, etc.
Introduce ARTstor
In 1999 The Mellon Foundation began to explore ways in which it might help address
community-wide needs for accessing and using images for noncommercial, educational
and scholarly purposes. Over the past 3 years, they have developed image collections
and tools for a service called ARTstor. The ARTstor Library's initial content
will include approximately 300,000 images covering art, architecture, and archeology.
ARTstor's initial software tools are meant to support a wide range of pedagogical
and research uses including: viewing and analyzing images through features such
as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared
uses, and creating and delivering presentations both online and offline. This
community resource will be made available solely for educational and scholarly
uses that noncommercial in nature. This is a licensed resource that will become
available in fall 2004. The UVa Library has obtained pre-release access to ARTstor
to test the service. It is not decided that the Library will subscribe to ARTstor.
These tests with faculty will help determine that.
Test ARTstor
Ask the participant to perform a set of tasks in ARTstor:
- Set up an individual account. (required to test some functionaility)
- Find images of interest to their teaching or research using a keyword search.
- Select an image and view it in the Display Viewer.
- Create and save an image group.
- Select an image from the group and annotate it.
- View the set of images in the Display Viewer.
- Search for a known artist or title of interest using the advanced search.
- Add one or more images from the results into that image group.
Gather impressions of ARTstor
Ask the participant to share their overall impressions of the software-would
they use it, how might they use it, etc.
Questionnaire
Ask the participant to fill out a questionnaire on their use of digital images
in the classroom and in research.
