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Users often concern the user-friendliness of an information system, but what is user-friendly really mean to them? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, user-friendly means “easy to learn, use, understand, or deal with”2. According to Wikipedia, it also refers as usability, meaning the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object, which can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with3. As McLaughlin, Simon, and Gillan (2010) described, a key benefit of usability is increased customer satisfaction.
In order to design an OPAC that is easy-to-use and satisfy diverse user information needs, there is a need to understand common problems encountered. Besides common users with different level of computing experience, elderly and children users with special needs also need to be consider.. Solomon (1993) and Larkin-Lieffers (2000) suggested common problems such as not knowing the correct spelling, having a high computer anxiety, and also age-related physical barriers. Yee (1991) also summarized some difficulties that library catalogue users commonly encountered.