Usability in digital humanities – Evaluating user interfaces, infrastructural components and the use of mobile devices during research process

Abstract

The usability of tools and services that form a digital research infrastructure is a key asset for their acceptance among researchers. When applied to infrastructures, the concept of usability needs to be extended to other aspects such as the interoperability between several infrastructure components. In this paper, we present the results of several usability studies. Our aim was not only to test the usability of single tools but also to assess the extent to which different tools and devices can be seamlessly integrated into a single digital research workflow. Our findings suggest that more resources need be spent on testing of digital tools and infrastructure components and that it is especially important to conduct user tests covering the whole knowledge process.