Library Revolution

This week I attended an extremely interesting all-day Web Usability workshop given by Steve Krug. It was one of those programs where everything he says is really common sense, and you spend the whole time saying, “well, of course!” But sometimes the common sense stuff – the stuff right there under our noses – needs to be pointed out to us so that we really see it.

There was a ton to take away from the session, but here are some of the important points I took with me.

• Test. With real people. Get some real users (and not just librarians!!!) to use your site in front of you and really watch and analyze what they do. There’s more to it than that (outlines in his book, Don’t Make Me Think), but that’s the gist. You’d be surprised what you can learn… and how incorporating the feedback can improve the experience of your site for your users.

• Spot jargon… and start speaking English. This is so important for librarians! We all assume that everyone knows what “Virtual Reference” or “eAudiobooks” are… but if you’re not a librarian, it might a well be gibberish. Sure, with some thought users might decode what the jargon on your page means, but the whole point is that they shouldn’t have to. Because they won’t. Web users don’t read- they scan. And if the links on your page aren’t obviously meaningful, they’ll get skipped.

• If something doesn’t work, fix it. When things are difficult to use, I find that Librarians love to write a brochure to explain it. Why not just make it easier to use? Duh.

• Do as little as possible to fix it. Yes, yes, yes. It’s like Occam’s razor of Web design and usability. Little tweaks are often all that is necessary to make a big difference in the usability of a site. If someone can’t find your catalog, don’t throw in the towel on the whole site design – just make the button bigger. Or move it a little to the left. Or make it red. Couldn’t that also apply to “fixing” a lot of other library services?

• Accessibility is necessary – and doable. It can seem daunting to tackle the issue of creating a site that is accessible to patrons with disabilities. But it’s the ethical thing to do…. and the legal thing to do. And there are resources out there that make accessibility achievable. So use them!!

Oh, and did I mention listening to the input of real people, not just librarians???

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Library Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.