Avaliação de usabilidade da interface de busca do Portal da Câmara dos Deputados: um estudo de caso

Abstract

The issue of this monograph is to respond if there are usability problems in the search interface of the House of Representatives Portal, what they are and how they can be identified. The work resulted in a helpful diagnostic to enhance the usability of the interface, depicting its situation and possible solutions to the problems found. The objectives were: to evince the importance that a search interface should meet usability principles; to describe the selected technique for interface evaluation; to identify the required criteria to applying this technique; to evaluate the interface using the proposed technique and criteria; and to produce a diagnostic of the interface. The motivations for the research object choice were: the researchers professional interest in relation to it, and the fact that this interface has been not subjected to this evaluation type before. The concepts of interface, in general, and of search interface, were brought. The importance that a search interface should permit the user to concentrate his efforts in carrying out his tasks was affirmed. Usability, ergonomics, and usability heuristic evaluation concepts were exposed. Shneidermans golden rules, adapted to the information retrieval context, were detailed, and they were taken as heuristics for the interface evaluation. This evaluation was made by a team of three experts, with a coordinator. A set of documents was used to support this task, providing guidance to evaluators, assisting the collect of findings, and allowing the compilation of results in a final report. At the end of the evaluation process, a list of problems related to interface usability came up, ranked by severity and associated to solutions proposed to them. Based on this list, the interface was diagnosed. Finally, the study states that the chosen technique was adequate for what were expected, and it speaks on the importance of systematically conducting usability evaluations.