Simplicity matters: user evaluation of the Slovene reference corpus

Abstract

The latest reference corpus of written Slovene, the Gigafida corpus, was created as part of the ‘Communication in Slovene’ project. In the same project, a web concordancer was designed for the broadest possible use, and tailored to the needs and abilities of user groups such as translators, writers, proofreaders and teachers. Two years after the corpus was published within the new tool, its features were assessed by the users. With an average rate of 4.36 on a scale between 1 and 5 (1 = I strongly disagree, 5 = I strongly agree), the results indicate that most survey participants agreed or strongly agreed with positive statements about the new implementations (e.g. “The corpus results are displayed in a clear manner”). This is a considerable improvement in user experience from the previous reference corpus of Slovene, i.e. the FidaPLUS corpus within the ASP32 concordancer (rated with 3.67). In the user feedback, the simplicity of search options and the interface clarity are highlighted as the main advantages, while for the future development, advanced visualizations of corpus data and improved search of word-phrases are suggested. The evaluation also highlighted some relevant user habits, such as not taking the time to learn systematically about the tool before they start using it. The findings will be implemented in future editions of the Gigafida corpus, but are relevant to any project that aims at facilitating a wider use of reference corpora and corpus-based resources.