Elektronik Belge Yönetim Sistemlerinin Kullanılabilirlik ve İnsan – Bilgisayar Etkileşimi Açısından Değerlendirilmesi: Hacettepe Üniversitesi Örneği

Abstract

In today's era of digital transformation, organizations are not able to achieve the efficiency and competitiveness they need without electronic records management systems. Electronic records management, which is the lifeblood of modern business world, contributes to the management of information and records in institutions through the processes of creating records according to standards, signing and distributing records in accordance with the workflow, protecting the confidentiality of the records with the authorization mechanism, providing access independent from time and location, maintaining the corporate memory, providing an organized work environment with paperless office, eliminating postal costs by digitally transmitting records, archiving according to business rules, and destroying expired records. While dozens of electronic records management systems (ERMS) around the world are introduced to the market with many new functions and features, usability feature of ERMS directly affects the efficient and effective use of all other functions and features. Because when the users cannot perform their current work with less effort by using the system, the systems remain idle and work efficiency decreases.

Electronic Records Management Systems should be tested periodically to uncover improvement points on adaptation to changing user profile, business rules and technology in software development process, in the certification process, before the software purchase decision is made and after the use of the software. However, the usability factor is under-represented in the selection and certification processes of ERMS and user-oriented software development and usability tests are still ignored. The reason for this negligence is that while the functional criteria can be easily formulated, ERMS stakeholders do not have the necessary competence and enough awareness about usability tests. In this thesis, 4 different usability assessment methods (Heuristic Evaluation, Server Log Analysis, Path Analysis Through Server Logs and User Test) were applied on Hacettepe University ERMS and application techniques, strengths and weaknesses of methods, recommendations for making methods more efficient, kinds of information that can be reached with each test method, the extent to which these information can be improved, the factors affecting the usability of the ERMS and the benefits of usability tests for different roles were revealed.

In the Heuristic Evaluation method, a list of usability criteria was developed via literature review and 30 pages which are important for ERMS were tested in 2 iterations in the light of these criteria. Statistical log information was obtained because of log analysis on 16 days log records and 8064 error log record which were stored on the ERMS server with server log analysis method. In Path Analysis Through Server Logs method, the path/route frequencies were determined in all sessions by following the steps of clearing the data, coding the page addresses, identifying the user sessions, determining the routes (URL sequences) in all sessions and revealing all sub-routes. Within the scope of the User Test method, user tests were carried out with 5 experienced, 5 inexperienced 10 subjects for problematic processes and pages that were pointed out by Server Log Analysis and Heuristic Evaluation methods. Through the tasks performed during the test, various quantitative information has been obtained regarding efficiency and efficiency measurement showing the user interface performance and qualitative data obtained by video recording and think-aloud technique.

At the end of the research, when all the findings are brought together, the fact that record creation screens are far from simplicity and lack of router, record search is not effective, access to information needed to perform operations difficult to access, feeling lost due to lack of navigation capabilities, non-router and non-instructional error messages and software design that allows non-standard record processing has been the most challenging factors that affect users most. In addition, a model has been developed for the usability assessment of the ERMS, and it has been explained how, in the model, the test methods can be used to benefit in three different categories, namely, ERMS usability assessment, the acquisition of decision support information on the ERMS, and the monitoring of the user trends in the ERMS.