School of Public Policy Building
George Mason University
Arlington, Virginia Campus.

Wednesday, May 7, 2003, 2:50-4:00 PM
Building Web Services Track, Session #6-4

Providing Your Users with an Effective Search Page - A Case Study
Louis Drummond, Library of Congress
Scott McDaniel, Cognetics Corporation

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) faced several difficult issues in redesigning a search page for Congressional staff. When looking up bills, their users did not understand when to use basic and advanced search pages, and they did not realize that they could search for bills from previous Congresses. They were confused about Boolean searching, and were unsure of how to look for specific phrases in the complete text of a bill. This session shows how CRS resolved these issues by combining user research, rapid prototyping, and usability testing.

View the slides from this presentation (PDF ).