Observing users, designing clarity: A case study on the user-centered design of a cross-language information retrieval system

This report presents a case study of the development of an interface for a novel and complex form of document retrieval: searching for texts written in foreign languages based on native language queries. Although the underlying technology for achieving such a search is relatively well understood, the appropriate interface design is not. A study involving users from the beginning of the design process is described, and it covers initial examination of user needs and tasks, preliminary design and testing of interface components, building, testing, and refining the interface, and, finally, conducting usability tests of the system. Lessons are learned at every stage of the process, leading to a much more informed view of how such an interface should be built.