There are currently no existing guidelines for optimizing user experience in online image databases. Here we use established usability design principles to develop a set of 50 recommendations for improving database organization, navigability, and search functionality. We conduct a resource audit of commercial and non-profit image galleries and evaluate them upon our criteria. Our findings are summarized within a basic wireframe to be used as reference for prospective image databases in the future.
Keywords: Image database; content management; searching; usability; user experience.