An Overview of the System Usability Scale in Library Website and System Usability Testing

Abstract

The System Usability Scale, or SUS, was created in 1986 by John Brooke and has been used extensively by a variety of industries to test numerous applications and systems. The SUS is a technology agnostic tool consisting of ten questions with five responses for each question ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Incorporating the SUS into library website and system usability testing may offer several benefits worth considering, however, it does have some very specific limitations and implementation challenges. This article summarizes examples in library and general literature of how the SUS has been incorporated into usability testing for websites, discovery tools, medical technologies, and print materials. Benefits and challenges of the SUS, best practices for incorporating the SUS into usability testing, and grading complexities are also examined. Possible alternatives and supplementary tools, such as single-item scales or other evaluative frameworks such as the UMUX, UMUX-LITE or SUPR-Q, are also briefly discussed.

Keywords

• user experience
• system usability scale