User-Centered Design

This was part of a discussion following a webcast from Learning Communities about "User-Centered Design in Your Library." Held last week when I was away.

I particularly was caught by the statement about lessening the number of click to popular pages. Something we should know and think about but somehow don't always. I'll pursue that line of thought as we fiddle with the home page. More as I get more data... mp

Prior to the fall 2005 semester the library staff here met with the university web site designer to plan a re-design of our library home page - style and content - and to develop a style for lower level pages. The existing library page did not have any design elements similar to the overall university design which likely added to navigational issues. We conducted focus groups with students in the spring of 2005 and asked a number of questions about the library web site. The main message we heard was - make it more streamlined, reduce the number of clicks needed to get to necessary resources, and other useful feedback. We took those comments into account when re-designing the web site. We didn't do any sort of formal useability study that could have involved watching students use the old website - but that could be helpful with the new one.

Our re-designed site now has many of the same navigational features of the university website, so it's more familiar to users. We added "breadcrumb" trails through the site so students can always find their way back to the page they started from. We made the most heavily used pages (based on web stats) mostly accessible with a click. - or two. We eliminated our static news box and replaced it with an RSS feed of our library blog which can be updated more frequently and more easily. We also eliminated our "What's New" page, and now just point users to the blog site. Our news now get read more frequently - and users don't miss important announcements.

We haven't surveyed our students since the re-design but annecdotal evidence suggests they are happy with the re-designed site's enhancements.

Thank you.

Steven Bell
bells@philau.edu

About sustaining attention

From Lorcan Dempsey, 1 Feb 2006

...
In a Media 2.0 environment, production and distribution have become cheaper and attention has become scarcer. So, for example media are now available in multiple ways - single TV programs and tracks are available as downloads; we have an extraordinary range of media outlets; there is an explosion in 'prosumer' content available through blogs and so on.

These economics create competence traps for media incumbents in a 2.0 world: since attention is now relatively scarce, economic advantage flows to whichever players can allocate attention - not production - most efficiently. That is, to try and make sure, wherever possible, each viewer, listener, or reader is consuming media where, when, and how they derive the most value from doing so. [Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab]

Think about libraries. The dynamic may be different in academic and public, but there are some similarites. Think of pictures of the traditional scholarly communications chain: it shows a small number of channels by which published research reaches readers. Think of how this has changed.

Where attention is scarcer one wants to provide engaging experiences that encourage people to return, one wants to place services where they are most needed in the reader's workflow (think of the commuter interest in audio, for example, or the learner's interest in seeing library resources in the course management system), one wants to have a clear well understood offering, one wants to project custom services into specific user environments (think of placing a metasearch of subject-specific databases in a course-page)....