userslib.com

Here’s a cool video of paper prototyping in action (minus the tedious bits). The device being tested is a PDA for meeting new people.

{ found via www.guuui.com }

All of Amazon’s Search Inside!™ books now show stats about the content of the book: the book’s 100 most frequently used words, number of words, words per sentence, “readability” (difficulty), etc.

find stats by hovering over the cover of a book that has “Search Inside!™” and choose “Concordance” or “Text Stats” | link to example

[via information aesthetics]

The Sneeze, about the only “for-fun” blog I still manage to read, has a funny post about using the Domino’s Pizza delivery web order form. I feel like there’s an interface design lesson her, but not sure what it is…

The Great Pizza Orientation Test

With anything these days, there’s always tons of debate over terminology, categorization, and placement of links on a page… We’ve been debating & testing our “Ask Us” (email & IM reference) service for over a year now and we still haven’t settled on something we all agree on (and the user’s agree on). So, Shana Kimball and I decided to do a little comparison of how some other libraries are doing it.

We’re not including any judgments in this report because we don’t have any data about how successful these libraries are – it’s merely a comparison. I’m sure there are many other libraries that have enticing graphics or wordings that we missed so suggestions are welcome.

Link to pdf of comparison chart (courtesy of the Usability Working Group).

When designing websites and interfaces, it’s important to know when to try to be unique and when to go with a standard. I think users are more adept at adapting to new interfaces than we give them credit for… however, if there is a standard already in place that will enable users to not have to think about where to click or how to search – why not use it?

To help with this, I’ve started a flickr account to collect Library Designs. I started with about 20 of my favorite library websites and took screen shots of the home page and a second level page.

For my first themed set, I picked out the sites that prominently link to their library’s email or chat reference services. I’ll formally report on this later.

I’ll add to this as topics come up. If anyone has suggestions for nice library websites, opacs, or digital library interfaces – I’m open to suggestions!

User’s Lib Flickr Design Library

Went to a screening of Helvetica, a documentary by Gary Hustwit.

I’m not sure if I’ll be using Helvetica any time soon, but the interviews with Helvetica fanatics and critics were fantastic and it gave me a renewed love for design.

Here’s what I learned. Helvetica (the typeface) is everywhere, it’s soulless, it’s neutral, it’s the mother tongue, it’s responsible for the Vietnam war, it’s your friend, it’s the corporation, it’s the air, it’s about the figure and the ground, it’s ubiquitous, it’ll bore the shit out of you.

Congrats to SPO for their release of the Ithaka report (”University Publishing in a Digital Age”).

It uses CommentPress from the Institute for the Future of the Book – so readers can comment on each page and each paragraph.

I was excited when CommentPress was released and thrilled to see it being used by our friends at SPO.

Facebook just released a interface specifically designed for the iphone. I don’t have an iphone, but I think it looks great in a regular browser and might start using instead of the default interface.

http://iphone.facebook.com/
(you must have a facebook account to view)

Sorry for the delay – here are some of my notes from last Tuesday’s MLibrary2.0 Gaming session.

Eli Neiburger: Gaming in the Library?

Eli is from the Ann Arbor District Library and you can find his presentation here.

Eli did an excellent job of describing and putting gamers in context. I think it’s an interesting area that is often overlooked when we think about what activities our patrons (and future patrons) are interested in and how we might use those interests to promote the library.

“Email is how you talk to old people” – AADL gamer

According the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the second most popular activity of those polled (ages 12-17) was gaming at 81%. [I also just came across this Trendspotting blog entry: 1 out of 4 online users are online game players: facts you should know so I think its quite clear that this is an area we ought to pay more attention to.]

• Gamers are very accustomed to dealing with complex interfaces like those used in online role playing games like World of Warcraft. They expect ubiquity. They expect everything to do everything – from water fountains to websites and wifi.
• Content from peers has a higher value than anything else. “Authority” has spent their authoritative capital.
• There are games that some faculty are starting to take an interest in as tools for learning. For example, SimCity and Civilization can be used to teach history, economics, city planning, etc.
• In a study by OCLC: College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, Libraries were rated more trustworthy and accurate than search engines but search engines were rated much higher than Libraries as being more convienient, easy to use, cost effective, reliable and fast. [oh my!]
• Establishing the Library as Third Place. Eric Frierson goes into some detail on this as well as the event in general.
• The Ann Arbor District Library has a blog on it’s front page to share info from the Director, about events, programs, and the collection. Eli said one of the great things about this is that it acts as a sort of focus group because they can get immediate feedback about what’s going on via patron comments.

Jane Blumenthol – Second Life

Jane is the Director of the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries where they are working on extensive plans to use Second Life in conjunction with the Medical School. They are planning a whole campus for medical school related events. There will be 3-D models that can be explored and simulations of patient consultations so med school students will have an additional way to practice their bedside mannor.

Her presentation isn’t available online yet, but see her del.icio.us account for many Second Life related links.

Lisa Hinchliffe

Lisa Head of the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Undergraduate Library and spoke about Library 2.0 initiatives. I found this to be an especially inspirational talk because she talked about the technology and being brave, passionate, decisive (just do it!), willing to change your mind, attaining a state of continuous evolution, funding the future, and saying “yes.”
UIUL developed a browser search bar for their catalog, website, and google. They were the first to develop a Facebook app for searching their opac, and they feed their twitter and various blogs into the library’s home page. They circulate games and hold tournaments.

Lisa also gave some great advice for when dealing with innovation: be careful not to put too much importance measuring success. It doesn’t operate like it might with circ & reference stats. Sometimes just trying something new is successful.