Heuristic Usability Evaluation of Mobile Website for the Iranian Academic Libraries, compared with the world's Top Universities’ Libraries

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this research is evaluating heuristic usability of mobile website of Iranian university libraries and comparing it to top universities in the world. Methodology: This is an applied research, in which the usability of libraries’ mobile website has been investigated by heuristic evaluation method. In this research, 20top universities affiliated to the MSRT, and 20top Islamic Azad university listed in ISC and 3 world top universities listed in webometric ranking have been chosen. Data collection is based on Nielsen (1994) and Fung (2016) usability checklist. Data analysis was done by SPSS software at both descriptive statistics and nonparametric inferential statistics including Friedman and Spearman correlation coefficient.Findings: Mobile website of the universities affiliated to the MSRT is good in terms of usability. IAU’s are average in terms of usability. Furthermore, the universities affiliated to the MSRT in comparing to the top universities of the world are very good in terms of usability. IAU’s in comparing to the top universities of world are good.In terms of usability, the final ranking was this: 1. Mazandaran University 2. Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, and 3. Harvard University. Results demonstrate that there is no correlation between the ranking of ISC/webometric and ranking according to the evaluation of usability of the university libraries of the mentioned universities.Originality: It seems that paying more attention to concepts such as usability in designing the mobile website of libraries by the designers regarding wide range of users causes better communication of users with it.

Keywords

• heuristic usability
• mobile website
• academic libraries
• evaluation studies