Usability study of digital institutional repositories

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide suggestions that could be adapted to improve the usability of institutional repository systems, and to establish a usability evaluation framework, which could be used for heuristic evaluation or formal usability testing of institutional repositories. The study seeks to establishe a usability evaluation guideline based on a literature review.Design/methodology/approachUsing the evaluation criteria and 30 subjects, the research team administered two usability experiments, laboratory and remote usability tests, and conducted a focus group interview with four experts. Based on the usability evaluation and focus group interview results, the paper proposes ways to improve system usability by showing selected screenshots of the dCollection interface.FindingsThe study shows that an effective provision of directions on how to register and search for documents, improving visual appearance, and clustering and displaying related materials based on the FRBR model is an important task to improve dCollection's usability.Originality/valueThe study establishes a usability evaluation framework for institutional repositories and evaluates the dCollection with the evaluation criteria.