IA-Usability

Search Box Syndrome

Submitted by Leo Klein on Fri, 9/30/11 (10:41am)

We've been here before -- from a usability study looking at how students use (or don't use as the case may be) various library database pages:

In 2006, Steve Krug said internet users were mostly looking for something clickable to click on; BGSU students, by contrast, often looked for a search box to search in. When a search was unsuccessful, instead of retooling it, the student looked for a different search box and tried the same search again. The students in the study tried to change the subset of information they were searching, not the search they had already decided was the best one.

Okay, so the next logical question might be, is this a student preference or is there something about the design of the website that drives them to it? Maybe yes, maybe no but considering the effort we put into all of this, it's certainly worth testing.

But hark! A bit further down in the same study -- apparently vendor consolidation will save the day:

Therefore, if we want students to use a wider range of our resources, it is crucial that we teach them to recognize the resources that will be useful for them. As the brand diversity of our resources narrows, vendors and publishers merge, and vendors market more and more to end users, this strategy may become easier to adopt.

Topic:

Design

IA-Usability

Library Literature

MetaFilter - Happy 12th Anniversary!

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sun, 7/24/11 (9:11pm)

MetaFilter was the original community blog. It's where everyone went to discuss everything from web design to politics. Last week it celebrated its 12th Anniversary.

The site was originally put together by Matt Haughey and frequented by techies. There was a lot of discussion in the early days about web design and development. Adherents of Jacob Nielsen and web designers would trade barbs particularly over the use of Flash (hence the 'Flash Wars'). This was a dispute not settled until the arrival of more reasonable adherents of usability like Jared Spool who knew how to speak to designers and thus had a far more positive impact.

Later on as membership grew, topics of more general interest such as news and politics became more prominent. MetaFilter was where we went to discuss the fall-out from the Bush-Gore election results in 2000 as well as the aftermath following 9/11.

Anyway, the local alternative weekly where Matt Haughey lives in Portland has run an interesting article on him called, "The Blogfather". Also, MetaFilter has its own page of user-submitted reminiscenes called, "MetaFilter Memories".

Topic:

Anniversary/Holiday

IA-Usability

Social Networking

The World is not (only) a Search Box

Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 5/4/10 (8:59am)

Interesting conclusion from a round of usability testing by Gerry McGovern:

The larger the website, the more important it becomes to have quality search. However, the foundation of all great websites is, and always will be, quality navigation. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the quality of your navigation and the quality of your search. The better the navigation, the better the search results will be.

Topic:

IA-Usability

Why I Love Task Analysis

Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 2/3/10 (1:43pm)

So we were developing some survey or the other and I thought I'd try it on a couple real live students before releasing it to the world.

Our first real-live student (guinea pig) comes in and is completely stumped by the drop-down menu asking her to indicate her major.

"What's the problem," I ask.

"Well," she replied, "I'm a freshman and I haven't decided."

Hello, Homer Simpson -- Duh!

And yes, we immediately added "Major Not Yet Chosen" to the thing, and lived happily ever after.

Topic:

IA-Usability

Current Reading: 'User-Centered Library Websites: Usability Evaluation Methods'

Submitted by Leo Klein on Mon, 7/27/09 (6:09pm)

'User-Centered Library Websites: Usability Evaluation Methods' by Carol A. George finally came in.

It sounded a bit basic but I thought I'd give it a look. It's listed as "Temporarily out of stock" at Amazon.

Topic:

IA-Usability

Library Literature

Location:

Chicago

Yes, Virginia, in Interface Design, There are Winners & Losers

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sat, 7/11/09 (9:43pm)

Usability is a major objective for Drupal 7, the new upcoming version -- so much so that they've set up a site entirely devoted to it called, 'Drupal 7 User Experience Project' -- or 'D7UX.org' for short.

You've got to love a site which wears a declaration like this on its sleeve:

"Our UX Principles: 1. Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable. 2. Design for the 80% 3. Privilege the Content Creator 4. Make the default settings smart"

Topic:

IA-Usability

Drupal

ALA

Usability Guidelines from the Yale University Library

Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 7/8/08 (4:49pm)

We've come a long way from the days of 'you must learn our system in order to use it'. From the Usability Guidelines at Yale University Library:

Factor	Examples
Simplicity. Scale back features and dramatically simplify the experience for initial use. This should reduce unnecessary distractions, excess information, from initial screens. An initial search screen should not include advanced features, such as search by publisher or call number.	Avoid wordiness -- only show most necessary text, be concise.
	Initial page should include only the most important and common tasks for this service with unobtrusive links to other advanced functionality.

More here...

P.S. Remember the Yale site when the front page was one big graphic of nothing but a bunch of leather book spines?

Topic:

IA-Usability

Institution:

Yale

The Cost of Complexity

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sat, 10/20/07 (2:57pm)

A while back, I mentioned in response to a post by Don Norman on "Simplicity Is Highly Overrated" that the washing machines where I lived are so complex that someone had lost all patience and crowbarred one of them open.

Topic:

IA-Usability

Library Webpage Design and the Notion of Conversion Rates

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sun, 8/19/07 (1:45pm)

We're all familiar with usability. Basically it's a way of assessing the success rate of any one task. Successfully finding a book or journal article starting from the home page would be a typical task to measure.

I'm wondering if it might also be helpful to think of task completion in the way marketers do, namely as "conversion rates".

MARKETING 101 FOR LIBRARIES

When librarians use the work "marketing", usually they mean 'getting the word out'. Marketers go one step farther: marketing for them means actually selling a product.

Topic:

IA-Usability

Design