Portfolio: ACM — Redesign of citation page for search results

ACM's Digital Library (DL) has the full text of everything that ACM has ever published. A Group Design Workshop identified the citation page as needing redesign to better communicate information about individual search results.

After the Workshop, we collated the results, and I worked with ACM on a complete redesign of this important page. Users represented by the Researcher persona have different needs than personas like the Practitioner, and this guided the design work.

We did a remote usability study, including important stakeholders who participated in the Workshop. A telephone study made scheduling easier for participants across the country.

ACM launched a beta version of the redesign, and asked users for feedback. There was plenty, and I collated the results for another round of design modifications.

In a note to members, ACM said that the redesign offers "a cleaner layout and greater ease of navigation"

See other work for ACM.

Handling user feedback

Analysis of the feedback showed that some users preferred a tabbed version of the UI, and some wanted all the text on one page so they could search or print more easily. The IT staff developed a method to allow users to choose the display they preferred. This also supports users who do not use JavaScript and those with screen readers.

Example of the UI

These images show the new and previous versions of the citation page:

The new UI has the most important information collected in a box, has tools all in one place, clearly identifies all of the information in the tabs and has a more modern look: Beta version of the new acm.org home page

Beta version of the new acm.org home page

The old version was not as well organized, and had more information below the fold, which required scrolling:

The old home page

...and without tabs, the old version was very long.

The old home page

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