Usability of the Swinburne University of Technology institutional repository: an expert review of the VITAL software

This report documents and explains the findings of an expert review (also known as heuristic analysis) of the Swinburne ARROW installation, also known as the Swinburne Research Bank. The VITAL software is reviewed from the perspective of information seekers, whose main goal is to find information. The review focuses solely on the usability aspects of the software; though at this early stage there are many technical issues still to be resolved with the software these are not addressed here. While the VITAL interface was analysed to usability standards, the results are reported here under four main web usability criteria: navigability, consistency, clarity, and simplicity. This report should be used as a guideline for advancing better usability of the software until such time as users can be observed using the software.