Abstract

Since its launch several years ago, Europeana has continued to improve the quantity and quality of its content, attempting to offer new services and differentiate itself from the more popular search engines. The Assets  project has contributed to this goal by developing innovative content-based search technologies and services, improving existing functionality, and designing more user-friendly interfaces. This paper describes in detail some of the new services that were implemented in a replica of the Europeana website. A user evaluation process was conducted in several European countries, with a total of 51 usability tests performed. The results reveal the benefits and drawbacks of the portal. The identified problems were systematically prioritized. In the final phase of the project, a redesign resolved 74% of all usability incidents. The result is a number of features that enhance the original Europeana portal, giving the user more and better search tools.