hugolio
commented
7 years ago Based on J. Nielsen, Usability Heuristic: "Recognition rather than recall" - "Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate."
Right now, some search tips are shown on the landing page of Emnesøk (e.g. "Once in, you can toggle between broad and narrow search. With narrow search, you will only get highly relevant results carefully indexed by skilled librarians and subject specialists using the selected vocabulary. Broad search will give you more results, matching subjects from other vocabularies or even keywords from a variety of sources, but sometimes at the expense of precision.")
It would be good to move these kinds of explanation to the appropriate search screens (since end-users may not read this before starting a search). E.g., a dropdown text box containing search tips can be added to the initial search page. Something similar could potentially also be shown when a user does not get any results when trying to find a concept.
e.g.:
Search tips ▼