Web Design | David Lee King

IL2007, Day 1: Putting Evidence-based Practice to Work

October 29, 2007 By David Lee King

Putting Evidence-based Practice to Work, Frank Cervone and Amanda Hollister

Frank:

most librarians haven’t been trained in HCI
defined evidence-based practice
data provides primary evidence for decision-making
it’s not “common sense” – different stuff generally happens than what you “think” will happen
Ex – doing a usability test, then comparing it with other similar tests to see the larger picture
similar to user-centered design
SPICE – setting, population, intervention, comparison, and evaluation
Northwestern did their first usability test in 2001
2002 – did a catalog usability test – they found that the greatest number of searches that failed were title searches – title search was the default search setting, students were typing keywords into the default search box and not finding anything… so they found some great info from this test
overall, site usability has improved – and they can prove it with statistical measures
debates about how to proceed are easier – because they have data to fall back to
easier to develop a strategy for incremental improvements over time – no longer locked into a tight academic schedule – they can prove the change will be an improvement, so have the go-ahead to roll the change out
remaining issues – jargon and “i can find everything in google” problems

Amanda:

spoke on making dynamic, page-based breadcrumbs on a website
did a study of common paths customers took to get to certain pages
they made something that constantly tells what paths customers are taking – very cool! They can narrow down to a single day if they want to
future directions – implement predictive track analysis – find out where people are getting lost dynamically, then have something po up that says “were you really looking for this?”

il2007

Community and the Digital Experience

July 25, 2007 By David Lee King

I’m knee-deep in wading through a bunch of articles and books on various aspects of experience design for the book I’m writing on digital experience planning, and I just had an epiphany today: I’m insane!

(No, wait – that’s not it…)

Ok – so I’ve been thinking about experience lately, both for my book and for the library website my library is currently redesigning. And we’ve been talking a lot about “experience.”

So what was my epiphany (hee – I just used the word “epiphany” twice in one blog post)? The type of experience a library website delivers. Because there’s more than one type of experience that can be delivered via the web.

Here’s what I mean. Go take a peek at the website for the newest Harry Potter movie (just promise to come back here!). That site clearly presents a type of experience – it’s all about fun, entertainment, projecting a theme through sound and cloudy, dark images, etc – it’s all about the experience of entertainment.

That’s a great digital experience – but that’s not what I want on my library’s website. No, that’s the wrong type of experience. So I continued thinking about digital experience and presentation for a library website (or any content-rich site, for that matter) – what type of experience should we be creating?

And then it dawned on me (yes, this is when the heavens opened and I had my epiphany (ha – did it again): the movie site is mimicking the actual movie… so a library site should mimic the actual library. And what type of experience happens in a library?

One of community. And conversation. And participation.

Those things happen here at the library EVERY SINGLE DAY. There’s an amazing amount of interaction between the library staff and our patrons – ideas being shared, information being found, meetings being held, and questions being asked and answered.

And that – that – is the experience I think libraries need to work on creating in a digital environment, be that in Second Life, in MySpace or FaceBook, or on the library’s website. Look at CNN and USAToday’s recent redesigns – they focus on community. Why? Because those newspapers exist to inform their user communities. And why not interact with those communities? That only makes sense.

It makes ok sense for a newspaper. But for a library? Community is our lifeblood. Our goals, as I see them, in the emerging digital age are to:

create a sense of community in our digital spaces
create and nurture conversations in our digital spaces
allow participation in our digital spaces

Do these things, and your digital doors will swing just as wide as your physical doors do now.

library2.0, web2.0, experience economy, participation

ALA2007: Ambient Findability: Librarians, Libraries, and the Internet of Things

June 25, 2007 By David Lee King

Peter Morville – very fun to hear! Good stuff, too.

Lead-off quote: Information that’s hard to find will remain information that’s hardly found.

organize websites so people can find what they’re looking for – that’s how he explains his job to his mom

provide multiple paths to the same information

What does usable mean? His honeycomb… :
useful, desirable, accessible, credible, findable, usable, valuable

You can do a “credibility audit” instead of a full-scale redesign…

desirability – takes us to brand and visual aspects

findable: ask 3 questions
1. can our users find our website
2. can our users find their way around our website
3. can our users find info on our site despite our website

perceived credibility – people trust nice-looking, well-designed sites

users tend to trust the first hits of google – think they’re the experts

Findability = credibility for people

cancer.gov… came up first with cancer – but not first with specific types of cancer

we’re designing the legacy systems of tomorrow

ambient findability: the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime

the degree to which a system or environment supports wayfinding, navigation, and retrieval…

a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention… (quote from Herbert Simon)

ambientdevices.com… designs stuff that changes when certain things happen… ex: ambient pen: changes color when user-defined associates voicemail the user… it’s an alternate interface to digital information

mentioned the iPhone… we have the promise of having the real web in our pockets

Cisco Wireless Location Appliance – using rfid, you can find things wirelessly – wheelchair example… you look at a map to find the exact location of a wheelchair instead of hunting them down.

Book: The Transparent Society, by David Brin: will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom? Sounds cool

rumsfeld quote – very funny – unknown unknowns…

Morville wrote a response to the Everything is Miscellaneous book… check it out

He quoted the book – the old way was a tree, now we are raking leaves… Morville then said that’s a great way to describe it… because leaves rot, turn into soil, and helop grow new trees!

John Battelle: search has become the new interface of commerce.

said don’t focus completely on web 2.0 – most of the work being done today isn’t web 2.0… ?

He likes Endeca – it works the way users work – it provides lots of possible next steps for search

harder to do, but public search engines (clusty, google, flickr) are experimenting with faceted search ideas)

everyzing – takes video and podcasting audio and translates it to text for search

delicious library – tag your stuff?

book: Everyware, by adam greenfield

ala2007, petermorville

Labels – Consistency and Context

June 10, 2007 By David Lee King

I’ve been pondering website labels lately… (boy, that David – he’s truly a geek!). No really – we’re going through a major website overhaul right now, and we’re to the point where we’re looking at labels (ie., does “Databases” really mean anything to our visitors?).

And so here are a few real-world examples of labels – or more appropriately, mis-labels.

The first one deals with consistency. I recently stayed at this hotel in New York City. It was a fine hotel, but I haven’t any idea what the name of the hotel actually is. Why? Take a look at all the names of this hotel:

Jolly Hotel Madison Towers
Madison Towers Hotel
Jolly Hotels
Jolly Madison Towers Hotel
Jolly Master Hotel
and … jollymadison.com !

The hotel has at least six different names! They need a little consistency, don’t you think? And, web people, we can use this lesson to make sure we are consistent in our naming and labeling schemes, too. Make sure you keep html titles, link labels, headings, etc. consistent across your website, on printed things, in articles and even in press releases. The goal is to have all labels match so there’s no confusion.

And now for context. OK – I bought this way cool t-shirt recently, at vinniecolaiuta.com (he’s an amazing drummer – think Sting, Frank Zappa, etc). So I’m at this drummer’s site, I see this shirt that reads “I hit things” and immediately think what any other drummer would think – “that’s cool!” and I bought it.

But now, having worn it out a few times … when I walk down the street, people stare at me, and give me a wide birth. When I’m at a store, they either say “don’t hit me” sort of sheepishly, or they ask “what do you hit?”

The problem? I don’t hit things! (well, other than drums). I’m a fairly gentle person when it comes to the propensity to want to hit things – I dont’ go around starting brawls, anyway!

So, I have labeled myself out of context. If I wore this shirt while drumming, it’d make perfect sense. Or maybe if I was a mean lookin’, tattoo-sportin’, hairy guy… But when I wear this at the grocery store, it doesn’t fit my personality very well (well, other than my extremely sarcastic, I think it’s funny ’cause no one else gets it bent).

Lesson #2: On our websites, we need to label things in context. Some of that has to do with jargon. My t-shirt uses drummer jargon that no one else understands … our library websites use jargon, too. Instead of using jargon, make sure to tag your services appropriately for your audience and for the content and purpose surrounding the labels. So if I’m with a bunch of drummers, my “I hit things” makes sense. But out at walmart, my shirt should say “I play drums.”

Just some food for thought…