David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Can a Library be your Office?

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OK – I know a library can be MY office … ’cause I work in one. But how about your patrons?

I was just reading Chris Brogan’s post (nice guy – I met him at SXSW last week) about where he works – frequently in a bookstore or a coffeeshop. And that made me think a bit … do his points about working in bookstores and coffeeshops work for a library too? Let’s experiment a bit and find out.

Here are his points about why he works in bookstores and coffeeshops, but with the word “library” inserted … with some comments from me:

  • Libraries have books, which are full of ideas. When I work here, I can pluck a book off the shelf, get an idea, and get a new perspective on my project. Yep – we have this one covered pretty well.
  • Libraries have fresh food and lots of people anxious to serve me the food. It means I can focus on what I’m doing and not worry about the sustenance part. Whew – my library, at least, has this one covered too. How about yours – do you have a coffeeshop in your library? More importantly … do you allow patrons to eat and drink in the library?
  • Libraries have big parking lots and lots of room to hold brief, cafe-shaped meetings with a few people. They’re not the best place to conduct official business, but they’re perfect for brainstorming and idea gathering and status delivering. My library has this one covered adequately too – we have a large parking lot (though it’s usually packed pretty full – we’re a popular destination in Topeka). And we have a variety of places to meet in the library – meeting rooms, smaller study rooms, and plenty of tables and power outlets. How about your library? Would anyone get “shushed” if they were holding a meeting at a table in your library?
  • Libraries are usually staffed with pleasant people who don’t do what I do, so they’re willing to chat for a few minutes, but won’t bury me in the details. We’re friendly, but would we chat with Chris? Probably so … but most libraries really aren’t set up for this. Desk staff are sitting at a desk, waiting for people to come to them – not walking around the library, chatting with and helping patrons (i.e., like most other service industries do).
  • Libraries are actually fun. How many people’s offices are fun? OK – my office is fun! And my library is fun, too. Is YOUR library fun? If not … why not?

So what’s the point here? Libraries have the potential to be GREAT co-working facilities for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Add a little coffee to the mix … add the ability to connect with others for casual conversations … and remove some of our out-of-date barriers (i.e., No talking! No cell phones! No food allowed!) … and libraries can be very relevant, cool places to “do business.”

What do you think? Would a small business owner or a freelancer want to work in your library? Are you set up to allow that?

Picture by Chris Brogan

SXSWi2009: Oooh. That’s Clever! Unnatural Experiments in Web Design

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Speaker: Paul Annett, Clearleft

Started off talking abut the arrow within the “Ex” of the FedEx logo and other hidden things within logos, fences, etc.

Innocent Smoothies (a juice company in England) – there’s a different message on the bottoms of some of their cartons. One says “stop looking at my bottom.”

Can do this in web design too – type about:mozilla into your firefox browser, into each version, and you get an unfolding story from a fake book about Mozilla…

… giving a live example … with audience participation, props, and a guy dressed in a gorilla suit

Showing fun ways to use css and backgrounds – when you resize the screen (twequency as example) clouds go by. Nice

Ho ho ho hat in flickr – users loved it!

Google Moon – if you zoomed in all the way, you saw cartoon cheese

They have planted “easter eggs” in websites – you have to find them, they’re sorta pointless (other than making people smile)

Transparency in web design – making things that aren’t white, but are transparent. Can be cleverly used

David Emery – his website does interesting things..

Kano Model of customer satisfaction: lots of this type of “customer delight” stuff fits in his model

Basic needs – with a hotel room, you’ll be mad if there’s no toilet paper, but lots of rolls don’t delight you. On the web, having a page that just works is a basic need

Creatives and designers work on fulfilling excitement needs

The Beginning of the New Normal

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change agentTwo posts caught my eye over the past couple of days, and they’re still rumbling around inside my head … let’s see if I can pull a couple thoughts out of the cacophony.

Both posts discuss how lots of industries are at the beginnings of huge restructuring/remaking themselves or are disappearing entirely, and how much of our lives will seem like upheaval until the “new normal” is reached. No one’s exactly sure what “normal” will look like (after the recession and remaking is over) – but everyone’s sure it will be completely different from now.

Here’s the first article, and the main one setting off thoughts for me: The Great Restructuring, by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff talks about our recession – first quoting Umair Haque calling it a great “compression … as an economy built on perceived value reconciles with actual value.”

Jeff also mentions this article from the New York Times and ends up calling our current recession a “great restructuring.” Then, he lists thoughts about quite a few industries and their future. Here’s a partial list of them:

  • America may well not be in the auto industry soon.
  • Financial services will have to be completely remade
  • Newspapers will vanish
  • Magazines are in worse shape than I would have guessed and many will go
  • Books’ channels of manufacturing, distribution, and sales will go through upheaval
  • Broadcast media will become meaningless, replaced by digital delivery
  • Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy
  • The blockbuster economy in entertainment will become harder to support as more attention and money shifts to the tail.
  • We should be so lucky that elementary and secondary education will also face such pressure.

And that’s just a few (go read the article for the whole list and some great thoughts).

Here’s the second article raising a ruckus in my head: Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011 from TechCrunch. This article mainly gives a music executive’s perspective of coming changes for his industry, and how they currently plan to figure it out. So it’s one industry’s perspective on how change will ultimately play out for them. Interesting take.

My question to you – are you ready?

Look at that list from the first article: books, magazines, newspapers, media. All going through huge changes, all going to be remade. And all stuff that’s near and dear to our librarian hearts!

Some of these changes are already starting, you know:

  • Newspapers and Magazines have already started going digital. It’s just a matter of time before more/most decide to stop printing that paper thing and go completely digital.
  • Books… {David quickly ducks} DON’T freak out! Of course I think people will still read books. That’s a given. But have you looked around lately and seen the Amazon Kindle? Or the iPhone ebook reader that millions of people are now carrying around? I have a book on mine to read right now. Those 300-page paper things will eventually turn digital – because it’s simply a container for the content – not the content itself.
  • Music and movies – think LPs/8-Tracks, Cassettes, CDs or super 8, 16 ml, vcr, DVD … and compare that to iTunes or Netflix emerging subscription models. Also going digital!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for libraries – most of our huge buildings exist to primarily hold physical stuff. What will we do when there’s no physical stuff to hold? Will you still be able to justify that large building? That staff? (My answer to that is yes, you can … if you are planning for change now).

How are you starting to re-think your services and libraries? My library is in the middle of strategic planning, and we’re going to tackle that whole “re-think everything” approach. Looks like Darien Library has been doing that, too. How about you?

Closing thought – I live in lucky times – I get to see … basically … my whole life change before my eyes. And I get to help it change.

Bonus reading:

  • An interesting article on remaking education
  • This post is where I found the title of for my article … good post, too – focuses on economic stuff

Aaron’s Notes on Spool’s Talk

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Aaron Schmidt (cool guy and Walking Paper blogger), attended Jared Spool’s User Interface Engineering Roadshow Portland … and he took notes!

Jared spoke about User Experience (UX) – Good gems here:

  • the great netflix experience is invisible. bad design is apparent
  • the guy putting info into the database determines part of the user experience
  • eliminate major redesigns! [krug] break designs into small chunks
  • it is necessary for employees to understand everything
  • customers lean towards competitors with simpler UX
  • identify essential functionality and experience

And the best tidbit, which relates to my post from yesterday:

must have basic functionality before you can concentrate on delight

Go read the whole thing, and thanks Aaron for taking notes!

*pic by Jesper Ronn-Jensen*

Experience Economy Goes by Many Names

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Experience is called many thingsJoseph Pine and James Gilmore noticed this thing they called the Experience Economy. They think we’ve moved beyond purchasing mere goods and services – now, we can purchase “experiences” (hence, the experience Economy). In their newest book, they blend the idea of experience with something they call Authenticity.

But Experience or the Experience Economy isn’t the only thing this notion is called – this post will introduce you to some other similar terms.

For example, when I read their book, I didn’t see much in the way of website experience. Certainly, the underlying ideas were there, but no concrete examples were given (it was written in 1999, so I’ll give them a break). That bugged me enough to write my own book about it, and I called the website version of it the Digital Experience.

Rohit Bhargava, who writes the Influential Marketing Blog, comes from a customer engagement and marketing/PR background. In his book Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get it Back, he calls it personality. Here’s a quote from the introduction that explains what personality is:

“The theory of Personality Not Included is that personality is the answer. Personality is the key element behind your brand and what it stands for, and the story that your products tell to your customers. Every element of your business, from your interactions with your customers to the packaging of your product is an element of your brand personality, and these are the elements that inspire delight or indifference among your customers. In short, personality matters.”

I heard Jane McGonigal speak last year at SXSWi 2008. She presented on gaming and alternate realities … and called it happiness. Here are some notes I took from her presentation:

Question – are you in the happiness business? Our primary product soon will be happiness – Happiness is the new capital

Four key principles of happiness:

  1. satisfying work to do
  2. experience of being good at something
  3. time spent with people we like
  4. chance to be a part of something bigger

McGonigal’s description of happiness sounds VERY similar to Pine & Gilmore’s description of experience and Bhargava’s description of a company with personality.

Ever heard of Touch Points? It’s sort of like usability … but doesn’t focus primarily on how the thing works. Instead, it focuses on the experience customers have during their interactions with the product or service or website.

Ok, one more. A few years back when Kathy Sierra was still blogging, many of her blog posts focused on this same concept – but she called it enchantment and kicking ass.

See what’s going on?

It’s not quite usability (but lives there). It’s not quite marketing (but it lives there). It’s not quite design (but it lives there too). It’s not quite customer service (yep – lives there). Not quite library 2.0 (even lives there).

There’s a convergence in many different fields right now – gaming, marketing, PR, web design, customer service, etc. – that all have, as their utmost goal, providing the customer with a positive experience … an authentic experience … happiness … attracting them with personality … enchanting them … helping them “kick patootie.” (ok, my wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap upbringing just kicked in – sorry ).

Question – how are you working to enchant your users? Not just meet their information needs … but delight them? Are you providing a positive experience, and if so – how?