Background and Objectives: User experience researches defined as study users’ perceptions and interactions of anticipated or intended use of a product, system, or service. Therefore, study these experiences are very important and can lead to value creation for information system stakeholders. The present study seeks to clarify deficiencies and difficulties experienced by users in interacting with the most important Digital Libraries (DLs) in Iran. Furthermore, demands and expectations of users also investigated in this research.
Methodology: The research conducted in a qualitative approach with content analysis method using MaxQDA V. 10 to investigate the experiences of 37 users of Papirus, Pars Azarakhsh and Sana DLs. In this study, the difficulties or deficiencies and demands or expectations of users considered in relation with their Hierarchical Value Map (HVM). The sample of the study selected by snowball sampling method. Credibility of the research verified with member checking and peer debriefing methods. Finally, the content of the interview analyzed in order to identify the main concepts and related thematic categories.
Findings: Customers and their knowledge considered as one of the most important organizational assets and an essential element of competitive advantage. In fact, this knowledge gained from within and outside the organization is the core capital and critical value. This is important because the customers and their knowledge considered as one of the most important organizational assets and an essential element of competitive advantage. Customer knowledge gained from their experience in the process of using a product or service. There are variety of approaches to elicit the experience and knowledge of the customers or stakeholders which analysis of cognitive structure is one of these approaches deeply deals with the experience and knowledge of individuals. Cognitive structure encompasses users’ emotions, mental images, views, beliefs and values in using a product or service. In this research Means-End Theory (MET) applied which is rarely used in information systems.
Discussion: Findings showed that the most important undesirable experiences of interacting with the DLs summarized in several dimensions: resource retrieval, display of search results, and process in searching the resources. In addition, displaying search results and search capabilities, additional features and services, linking resources to libraries were among the most important favorable experiences that users expected from DLs. The relationship between deficiencies and expectations depicted in HVM. Their values were correct selection, retrieval, and access to the full text information resources. The results of this study showed that this part of the user experience should considered by the designers of DLs in order to better design of these systems to provide more value to all stakeholders.