Bonolo

To determine whether the system answers the three research questions, two sets of evaluations were carried out. Firstly, user experience evaluations were conducted to determine whether the first and third success factors were met. A performance evaluation was carried out on the system to determine how well it meets the second success factor.

User eXperience (UX) Evaluation

17 users completed the final UX evaluation of Bonolo. Each of the users was provided with a test consisting of 5 sets of tasks. Following each set of tasks was a qualitative evaluation questionnaire relating to the tasks that were just completed.

The results of the UX evaluation would point out any areas in the interface where users felt uncomfortable, frustrated, dissatisfied or confused. Moreover, it will also illustrate whether the output and interactions with the system were what the user expected and whether the system responded to user interaction within a reasonable amount of time.

Performance Evaluation

The performance evaluation involved a exponential increase in the size of the collection – testing collections with 1 000, 2 000, 4 000, 8 000, 16 000, 32 000 and 64 000 digital objects. The actual structure of the collection remained the same in these tests. In addition to this, the amount of data transferred from the server to the client was recorded. These tests were conducted to determine how well the system scales and how robust it is.

Results

The results of the evaluations answered the three research questions. In answering the first question – will using a simple file hierarchy as a file store affect the overall end-user experience when using the interface? – it was found that despite the simple file store, this did not detract from the end-user experience. Users generally felt comfortable and satisfied with the way that the interface behaved and made them feel.

The second question – what is the impact of using a hierarchical file-based data store on the performance of the end-user interface? – was answered by noting that there are some performance compromises when scaling the collection size up. The tests showed that page load times remained consistent at approximately 2 seconds – thus showing that there is no negative effect on page display times. It was found that the algorithm for paginating the search results was detrimental in maintaining reasonable page load times. It is suspected that if this algorithm were improved, then page load times on the search page will become reasonable. The amount of data transferred from the server to the Web browser showed significant improvements when thumbnails were introduced. Thus reducing up to 90% of data transferred, making all of the Web pages under 2 megabytes to load.

When answering the final research question – is it possible to create an end-user interface, built on a simple file store that is comparable to other digital repository systems? – it was found that users felt that the Bonolo end-user interface was comparable to the interfaces offered by other digital repository systems. End-users felt that the feature set and usability of the system displayed this. Therefore, this suggests that it is, in fact, possible to create an end-user interface that is comparable to other digital repository systems, despite it being built on the simple file store. However, for this to be more conclusive, a more comprehensive user evaluation would have to be carried out.