ID 600: User Centered Design: Database Tips

If you are unfamiliar with searching in databases the process can seem overwhelming but if you follow the tips and tricks below you ensure you are on track!  

Remember you can always contact your librarian to set up a one on one research appointment - we are here to make sure you are successful!

Step 1: Log into a database: for this example we are going to use the 'DDAI' as our sample database 

Remember searching in the databases is not the same as in Google.  You want to be specific when entering your search terms.  You should have no more than one or two key words in each search bar (unless you are doing a phrase search). For this example I will conduct general research on the phrase "user centered design" and the keyword office.  By putting "user centered design" in quotes the database knows to look not only for those words in the article but to find those words in that particular order AKA as a phrase - phrase searching help you to get more relevant article results. 

Utilize the limiters on the left hand side of your search result screen to further narrow your results.  For this assignment your sources must include peer reviewed so under the Heading 'Source Type' click on Scholarly Journals.

To narrow your results further you can use the 'Publication Date' limiter to access the most recent articles on your topic.  Discuss a timeline with your Professor, a good starting point is to limit to the last five years.

Now that you have narrowed your results to a manageable number of articles it is time to review them.  

Best practices are as follows:

• Browse the article titles and when one is of interest to your topic click on the title to open it.

• Locate and read the abstract (summary) if the article.

• If it is relevant to your research save the article by downloading the pdf, emailing it to yourself or saving it to your RefWorks account OR follow the Find IT link to locate the full text in another database.

• Then return to your results list and continue browsing other titles.
• Remember to keep your list of search terms with you when researching and write down additional ways to search on your topic as you come across them in your results. 

You have the ability to search multiple databases at once by following the steps below.  You would want to search multiple databases at once in order to increase the amount of search results and to search across many different disciplines.  For example we were searching for lighting and classrooms in the DAAI database but it is very likely an article related to this topic would be published in an education database - by searching multiple databases at once you would be able to see articles published in journals specific to Interior Design as well as other disciplines like Education, Health, etc.

The process for expanding to multiple databases looks slightly different in each database depending on the vendor.  Below are examples of how to expand your search in EBSCO and ProQuest databases which are the most commonly used.

Expanding your search in EBSCO databases