This study describes the results of a multiple research, which focuses on the measurement of quality in use of the software product in library environment. With the words of Nigel Bevan (Bevan, 1999) the meaning of quality in use is the user view of the quality of system containing software, the combined effect of the software quality characteristics for the user.
This effect can be measured with user effectiveness, productivity and satisfaction, ISO/IEC 9126-4 (ISO/IEC, 2004) provides metrics for the measurement of these factors, in the given user environment. In this study the software product we examined was the OPAC module of integrated system in a library, and the user environment was the university library and user groups typical in this environment.
Purposes of the examination were the followings:
· First of all we were searching for the answers, how effectively; productively and efficiently can users achieve information retrievals for different topics. And how these features of the retrievals effected on their satisfaction with the software product used during processes.
· Another purpose of this research was to show whether there is any difference among the result of user groups, defined by different aspects.
Methodology
Measurement of quality in use according to ISO/IEC 9126-4 standard can be done in the most effective way by a test environment, which resembles to the real user environment in the most important details. The test environment was presented as following:
We made private assesses of the online catalogue of the university library, which were available for only the test users. This way we ensured the separation of find log files of test users from other users of the library.
We became able to connect each log files to given users, this was important because we measured user satisfaction by questionnaire by users.
Selecting test users for test groups we tried to represent typical and usual user groups of the university library. Composition of the users was very mixed considering age, work place, higher education institute, gender and it was also important that they presumably had different prior experiences and skills in the field of information retrieval.
The experiment
In the data recording part of the experiment test users were allowed reach OPAC in ad libitum time and place to solve five subject oriented information retrieval tasks. After finishing retrievals they filled out a satisfaction questionnaire regarding to the software product. Result of actions mentioned above yielded log files and correlating questionnaires. Identification of user groups was easy by gender, age, workplace and higher education institutes but it was more difficult to identify of the level of information retrieval skills of the user.
Results
According to the metrics of ISO/IEC-9126-4 standard we calculated from the log files the effectiveness, completeness, task time and efficiency of the whole test user group, from the questionnaires we measured the satisfaction of the users with software product.
We examined which factors influenced mostly the user satisfaction with software product. Then we calculated values of correlation coefficient between effectiveness-satisfaction, completeness-satisfaction, efficiency-satisfaction, task time-satisfaction.
In the next step of the examination we calculated the values of correlation coefficients of each factor pairs mentioned above, even in the user groups created according the following procedures:
References
Bevan, N., 1999. Quality in use: Meeting user needs for quality. The Journal of System and Software. 1999. no. 1. pp. 89-96.
ISO/IEC TR 9126-4: Software engineering-Product quality-Part 4: Quality in use metrics, 2004. ISO/IEC 2004.