Digital Library Perspectives

The usability study on the multicultural childrens book project of the National
Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea
Wooseob Jeong,
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Wooseob Jeong, (2016) "The usability study on the multicultural childrens book project of the
National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea", Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 32
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DLP
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52
Received 23 July 2015
Revised 16 September 2015
Accepted 16 September 2015
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Digital Library Perspectives
Vol. 32 No. 1, 2016
pp. 52-59
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2059-5816
DOI 10.1108/DLP-07-2015-0009
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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The usability study on the
multicultural childrens book
project of the National Library
for Children and Young Adults
(NLCY) in Korea
Wooseob Jeong
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify usability issues on a storytelling digital library
with six languages provided by the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in
Korea, and to provide suggestions for future improvement to create a better interface.
Design/methodology/approach In this study, usability issues at the multicultural childrens
book project Web site of the NLCY were identified, with comparison between the previous interface
and the current one, based on the findings of established literature on childrens use of computer
applications and web interface.
Findings Suggestions for improvements include brighter colors, bigger fonts and graphics, more
lively animation and sound, easier navigation, consistent interface, summary availability, better
organization of information and labeling and multilingual searching and browsing function. A user
study is being planned for future development.
Originality/value There is a great value in making 400 childrens books available to the public at the
NLCY digital library in six different languages with their original pictures animated and their stories
performed in a storytelling mode. However, to provide more pleasant access to the valuable site, particularly
for children users, there is much room for improvement in terms of the user interface. Based on these findings,
a user study is being planned for future development, which should be more intuitive for users, particularly
children.
Keywords Digital libraries, Usability, Human computer interaction, Childrens digital libraries,
Childrens interaction with computers, User interface
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Beginning in 2009, the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea has
made more than 400 childrens picture books published in Korea available on the web, in six
different languages (Korean, English, Chinese, Mongolian, Thai and Vietnamese) in the form
of adopted animations accompanied by storytelling performances. This large project is one
of many efforts by the Korean government to educate and assimilate foreign populations,
along with their children, who have been arriving since the 1990s in this still extremely
homogeneous country. The six languages were selected because they are most frequently
used among the foreign population in Korea.
A selection committee, consisting of the librarians at the NLCY and external experts,
chose a list of quality books. The library contacted the publishers to clear copyright,
 which were subsequently cleared with a modest fee. The ongoing project is currently Usability
available at the NLCY homepage at http://storytelling.nlcy.go.kr. In addition to the study
online web-based access, the entire contents were published in DVD sets, and 12 selected
books were published in print format in the six different languages with the original
illustrations. The DVDs and the translated books were distributed to all the public
libraries in Korea for free. The distributed DVDs, books and the Web site have been used
as important materials for multicultural education programs for immigrants in many 53
public libraries in Korea. The best practices of those programs have been presented at
various library conferences in Korea and abroad.
However, in spite of the massive quantity of translated, animated and performed
storytelling in this project, the interface of the Web site is not ideal for users, particularly
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for children. The web interface has been enhanced continuously, but still there are rooms
for improvement in terms of user experiences.

Purpose of study
In this study, usability issues on this site are identified based on findings from the related
literature and provide suggestions for future improvement to create a better interface. Since
the interface has significantly improved recently, the changes from the past interface to the
current one are also discussed. The primary audience of the digital library project is children
in kindergarten to lower grades in elementary school (5-9 years old).

Literature review
Childrens information-seeking behavior in general
Numerous studies have been conducted to understand how childrens information-
seeking behavior influences their interaction with digital media and the web interfaces.
Dresang (2005) points out that childrens information-seeking behavior related to childrens
digital media use might be that the young are missing rich information from the
environment due to their information-seeking skills not being fully developed. Bilal (2005)
tells that 43 per cent of children felt frustrated during the search process because of the zero
hits of childrens retrieval using Yahooligans! In addition, 85 per cent of children were
motivated to use the Web for increasing self-confidence, challenge, discovery and
convenience. It is known that the factors which determined childrens ability to search
successfully were the amount of experience the children had of using the Internet, the
amount of guidance from adults and friends (Druin et al., 2010) and the ability of them to
explore the virtual environment and to use the tools available (Madden et al., 2006).
Childrens information need should connect to childrens other needs at different
developmental stages (Lu, 2010). In a recent study, Bilal and Sarangthem (2009) stated,
childrens information seeking was characterized by seven modes of behavior: Start,
Recognize, Browse, Differentiate, Read, Explore and Finish.

Childrens information seeking in digital libraries

Studies on childrens information-seeking behavior in digital libraries are useful to
understand their interaction with digital library interfaces. Reuter and Druin (2004)
described how elementary school children search for books using a digital library. They
found elementary school children were able to perform the most queries. While young
children (first graders) may have enjoyed the process of interacting with the browsing
search results and the International Childrens Digital Library (ICDL) software, the fifth
graders (older children) may have been more selective in their book selection and
 DLP conduct multiple queries for proper search results. Hutchinson et al. (2006) explored a
32,1 user study for the ICDLs better interface design. They noticed that children have
difficulties to rely on their knowledge of hierarchies and understand of abstract. They
found that children asked for fewer helps (they called hints) while they completed the
search tasks on the interface with flat categories than the interface with hierarchical
categories. Druin (2005) investigated challenges that children (ages 7-11) experienced in
54 understanding reading, writing and typing during information seeking, and so, she
suggested that children need tools to search in multiple ways such as categorical
browsing and keyword search and searching through interface design for childrens
effective information seeking in a digital library.
Bilal and Bachir (2007) examined Arabic-speaking childrens interaction with the
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ICDL to search Arabic books and their information-seeking behavior. Specifically, they
investigated Arabic childrens information-seeking behavior by assigning the four
tasks to them in the ICDL. The Arabic children performed the keyword searching and
browsing for the tasks. However, the children avoided the keyword searching due to
lack of Arabic keyword searching support of the ICDL. Hence, the results indicated that
Arabic childrens information-seeking behavior was characterized by browsing using a
single function and were successful on the self-generated tasks rather than on the
assigned and semi-assigned tasks.

Childrens information-seeking difficulties

Difficulties in motor skills. Borgman et al. (1995) pointed out the childrens hunt and peck
typing difficulty, in which a child seeks out each key before striking it, on the keyboard. They
offered one solution to use subject hierarchies of kids through a point and click mechanism.
Hutchinson et al. (2005a, 2005b) indicated childrens mouse dragging and clicking difficulties
in their study, which makes children frustrated. It is still difficult for children to scroll down
smoothly and accurately due to lack of their motor skill (Hutchinson et al., 2006) and
separation of mouse buttons (Hourcade et al., 2003) and so it prevents children from finding
and navigating online information effectively. Naidu (2005) found that children do not like to
use scrolling down of the web pages. Gossen et al. (2012) also indicated that scrolling is a
difficult task for children since they need to use scroll wheel of the mouse, which their limited
motor skills prevent them from using.
Difficulties in cognitive development. According to Beheshti et al. (2010), children
experienced more cognitive overload in keyword searching than in browsing when children
interact with information retrieval systems. Gossen et al. (2012) told that childrens cognitive
skills influence their information seeking behavior such as searching strategy and result
selection. Also they pointed out the problem of childrens limited domain knowledge in
keyword-oriented search systems. As children are getting older, they are likely to retrieve
complex tasks from long-term memory compared to younger children because older
children have more experiences than the younger so the experiences would be stored their
long-term memory and it will help children to develop cognition (Shaffer and Kipp, 2010).
Difficulties in typing and reading. Borgman et al. (1995) pointed out that children
experience difficulty in spelling and typing keywords. Gossen et al. (2012) and Hutchinson
et al. (2006) confirmed the childrens typing difficulty as well as their spelling mistakes as
challenges in childrens information seeking. Druin et al. (2010) found that younger children
showed more frustration with typing queries than older children.
 For better reading and understanding of the web interface, Nielsen (2010) Usability
emphasized that larger font sizes for children (12-14 point) than for adults (10 point). study
Hutchinson et al. (2005a, 2005b) suggested larger buttons and widgets for childrens
quick information selections.

Findings
Colors, fonts and graphics
The previous interface had some basic colors in muted tones with small fonts displaying
55
the title of the story underneath a small graphic depiction of a page in the story. Children
prefer to have a portal page which has bold, colorful backgrounds and graphics which
include fonts that are large; such as a 14-point font for young users and 12-point font for
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older users (Nielsen, 2010) with suitable vocabulary for their age (Bilal and Bachir, 2007).
Creating a page with brighter colors, larger graphics and fonts will enhance the page
and attract more users. It was difficult to know what the languages are on the NLCY
interface, and the flags depicted show ambiguous identification of each country. Large,
Beheshti and Rahman suggested the use of attractive screen designs based on color,
graphics and animation, plus keyword search and browsable subject categories for the
design of childrens web portals (Large et al., 2002a, 2002b).
In the new interface, the first page has changed into colorful background design and
pictures with bold and bigger font size so it looks brighter than previous page design. Also,
they removed the ambiguous flags which were designated by identification of each country.
The new interface has textual buttons at the top of the page to choose a language. The new
interface has also three tabs at the right side for browsing entire collection by book covers, for
listing bibliographical information of each book in a table format and for showing how to use
the site.

Animation and sound

Animation and sound are important for children to like and want to interact with the
interface page (Nielsen, 2010). Children prefer Web sites having many animations and
pictures (Naidu, 2005). Druin (2005) recommended an interface which can be modified to
increase childrens retrieval success for digital libraries. The NLCY has animation and
sound; however, there are some limitations. Many scenes only have a characters head or one
object moving while the remaining screen is static. In other words, only a small part of the
screen is animated, which may make the children watching get bored. In regards to sound,
there is only one storyteller on the site with very limited sound effects. The stories need more
animation and sound to create more interest and engagement with the story.
The recent improvement of web interface did not influence much on the animation
and sound features. There is little difference between two interfaces regarding
individual stories animation and sound. Animation, sound and color are important
factors for children to choose a story. According to Bilal and Sarangthem (2009), when
children cannot read books due to language barriers, they rely on images and colors to
understand the story. Thus, improvement of animation, color and sound effects of the
story is very important to promote childrens reading.

Difficulty in navigation
In the previous interface, to navigate to the next page of stories on the interface, a child
needed to click at the bottom of the page, a small numeral or a tiny red arrow. It is
difficult for children to find and accurately select a small icon to advance to another page
 DLP which can cause the child to become discouraged in navigating the site (Hutchinson
32,1 et al., 2005a, 2005b). Children should have buttons or larger targets on the interface;
therefore, the child can easily move and accurately navigate to the stories.
The navigation system changed in the new interface. Instead of the small numeral
and the tiny red arrow, at the right side of page, a scrolling bar is available for up and
down to browse the cover of each story and its title. However, previous research found
56 that it is still difficult for children to scroll up and down smoothly and accurately due to
lack of their motor skill (Hutchinson et al. 2006) and separation of mouse buttons
(Hourcade et al., 2003) and so it prevents finding and navigating the story collection
effectively. Further, since childrens attention span is shorter and their working memory
capacity is smaller than adults, scrolling up and down many pages may make children
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discouraged to find and navigate a proper story.

Inconsistent interfaces
In the previous interface, within each story, there were small interactive buttons which
hide or allow the speaker of the story or the written words of the story to appear while
the user is listening to the story. It was found in the course of this study, these buttons
varied in location from one story to the next. With some stories, the buttons are located
on the left side margin of the book, while in other stories the buttons were located on the
right side of the book. The buttons also changed color along with being housed in a
one-button icon or they had their own separate button. Inconsistencies in the layout of a
user interface will affect how the users feel about the site and whether they want to
continue using it (Ahmed et al., 2006). Creating a layout which follows the same type of
format for each storybook will increase the satisfaction of the users.
In the new interface, in spite of significant improvement, the site still provides
inconsistent interfaces for each story. For example, while some stories are offering three
green round icons, others are not. In addition, it is not easy to figure out what three green
buttons are for because there is no textual information around those buttons and they
are not intuitive. A child needs to mouse over each button to see what it is really intended
to do. Furthermore, when the icons are clicked, the following screen is always in Korean
even though the initial interface is in other languages. It is necessary to maintain the
current language until a user changes the language choice.

Summary availability
Hutchinson and others explained how older children rely on book summaries when selecting
a story to read (Hutchinson et al., 2005a, 2005b). The NLCY provided some summaries for
their books on the previous interface; however, they were inconsistent throughout the
selections with some books providing a summary, while others do not. Having an overview
of a story might aid a user in making a choice in selecting the book to read (Bederson et al.,
2009). Without the summary, the users will either choose not to read it or they have to enter
and start reading the story to determine the choice. Fortunately, the current interface is
providing summaries for all stories. This enables children to choose the story effectively and
efficiently. In fact, by providing summaries for all stories in its collection, the site looks more
informative and reliable due to its consistency.

Information organization and labeling

Labeling and organization of information is important, especially for children due to
their cognitive and physical development. In the previous interface, the stories were
 organized with nine books displayed on a page with the titles of the stories underneath Usability
each pictorial representation of the book. Children typically choose books by category or study
from a physical characteristic of the book. Having individual categories which represent
the type of books within the collection will aid the users in the process of browsing or
searching for a book they would like to read (Bilal, 2002). Moreover, as part of the
labeling on the interface, HELP is an essential component, especially on a childrens
interface page. Children like to have HELP that provides information which aids in the 57
searching process (Bilal, 2002). The previous interface in English provided HELP;
however, it was labeled Details. While it is questionable how much some young
children can understand the definition of the word Details, the section itself only
provided labeling of each facet on a specific interface page. Moreover, the HELP section
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did not explain how to conduct a search on the site. It would be much better to provide
How To pages to make it easier for children to search for stories on the site, which
could be with screenshots or tutorials on navigating the pages.
In the new interface, the NLCY added two more tabs along with the old HELP tab: Entire
Childrens Story and Book Information. The tab of Entire Childrens Story shows the
whole collection of stories with their book cover images in thumbnail and their titles below
each image. The tab of Book Information provides metadata of each story such as titles,
authors, illustrators, publishers and tiny images of book covers. These new tabs are
available to help children identify information about each story easily. However, both new
features use a scrolling bar for their navigation, which is not recommended by previous
studies (Naidu, 2005; Gossen et al., 2012; Hutchinson et al., 2005a, 2005b). In terms of labeling,
still the HELP feature is labeled Details. Changing the label such as How to or Help will
be helpful for children to understand the HELP feature clearly.

Searching, browsing and other aspects

An interface should have more than one type of searching style available to
accommodate all age levels and searching modes (Reuter and Druin, 2004). In the
previous interface, searching for a story could be done via a search box, though the
search box only allows for the Korean language. Being a multicultural storytelling site
with multiple languages, the interface should be multicultural and provide for searches
with other represented languages.
The NLCY changed the location of a search box in the middle of the first page so that
the search box is more clearly visible. It now allows users to use other languages such as
English, Mongolian, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese in the search box. Because the goal
of this site is to promote multicultural childrens reading, allowing search in multiple
languages is very important. According to Bilal and Sarangthem (2009), language
capabilities are a stronger factor in selecting books. Children did not select books in
languages they did not speak. Therefore, supporting multilingual searching is very
important for a multicultural digital library. The NLCYs support of multilingual
searching enables children using different languages to interact with the system.
However, still the site only allows a keyword search. According to Bilal (2002), who
investigated children using a web search engine, children did not like using only a keyword
search box. Children would rather use an icon/metaphor (Druin, 2005) and other ways to
search on the site (Bilal, 2002). Furthermore, icons/metaphors are needed to aid in the
searching process which would aid a searcher who has difficulty spelling (Bilal and Bachir,
2007). Childrens spelling skills do not start to improve until the 5th grade or age 11
 DLP (Borgman et al., 1995). Icons/metaphors are usually objects which aid a child in the searching
32,1 process by providing a recognizable item (Large et al., 2002a, 2002b). Providing
representative icons will allow users who are younger to find a story they would like without
having to worry about interpreting the text presented on the page.
Loading time is another important factor for a better interface. When searching or
browsing, children typically prefer a faster load time to keep their interest (Bilal, 2002).
58 The NLCY is inconsistent in the load time with some individual stories loading slower
than others. An instruction video on how to use the site would be significantly beneficial
for first comers or young users.

Conclusion
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There is a great value in making 400 childrens books available to the public at the NLCY
digital library in six different languages with their original pictures animated and their
stories performed in a storytelling mode. However, to provide more pleasant access to the
valuable site, particularly for children users, there is much room for improvement in terms of
the user interface. Based on these findings, a user study is being planned for future
development, which should be more intuitive for users, particularly children. Such study will
consider using touch screens along with conventional mouse-keyboard-monitor systems to
compare childrens ease of use on both interfaces. The site is meant for general population,
but it would be also valuable to investigate its interface with special groups such as gifted
children and children with special needs.

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Corresponding author
Wooseob Jeong can be contacted at: wjj8612@uwm.edu

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