userslib.com

This is the second year of the University of Michigan Library’s iDesign competition. This year’s theme is virtual browsing and the challenge is to design an innovative tool which will enhance MLibrary’s discovery environment.

We received some fantastic entries! I especially appreciate the projects that employed UX research methods to inform their designs. If you are so inclined, you can vote on the projects or just have a look at the individual projects:

CataLIST

“…a recommender system could be developed to utilize this rich set of knowledge to curate subsets of the overall library collections, which could then be used to make recommendations to users. A large number of these subsets from across the university could be interconnected and used to surface new content to users, enhance their experience, and break down artificial barriers created by different subject areas.”

MyLibrary Mobile App

“Ever lend a book to a friend? Ever wish they would bring it back? Forget who you lent it to in the first place? MyLibrary will finally let you keep track of your personal collection.”

MLibrary Search
Designs for an improved multi-search interface

Aoide: Virtual Browsing Exploration for MLibrary Audio Collection

A-oi-de [ey-oi-dee] – noun: “A virtual browsing system that aims to facilitate new methods of interpreting search results through virtualized representations of audio CD materials for the University of Michigan’s Music Library.”

FilmGrid

A visual browser for Askwith Media Library

We’ve been very hard at work over in the User Experience Department!

We started working on a year long mobile initiative in September and have officially wrapped our first phase of work. The result is a site that provides access to key library content and services in a mobile-friendly format. The site currently provides access to Mirlyn Mobile, a list of mobile friendly databases, library hours & locations, ask a librarian services, research guides, and news & events.

The above image is the basis of our promotional campaign. We’ll soon be distributing signs, bookmarks, and digital sign graphics all around campus. The idea for it came from the amazing Liene and then once I found a willing butt, I was able to turn the idea into the design above.

MLibrary Mobile

MLibrary Mobile Initiative Project page

UPDATE: I also wanted to mention that I’ve distributed print & screen promotions around to our various libraries and a few classroom buildings. These materials include a QR code to the mobile site. If you’re interested in seeing stats for scans of the QR code, here’s the bit.ly stats page: http://bit.ly/gLu272+

Fantastic, must read article from Craig Mod about the future of print and digital books.

http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/

NCSU recently launched a new mobile website – and it’s very impressive!

It offers standard features like catalog search, locations & hours, etc., but also allows you to view a map of where available computers are and webcams of the libraries including the line at the coffee shop. Love it.

Read about the interface: www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/about.html
View a demo of the site: www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/home/?browse=iphone

They also made a fun video to promote it:

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen released a study this week about mobile usability: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html.

The result? “The mobile user experience is miserable.”

Here are some highlights:

• The average success rate for mobile websites was 59% compared to 80% for regular sites.
• Small screens are limiting since they have to show less at a time which results in more clicks and a heavier reliance on short term memory.
• Input is awkward and more error prone due to more scrolling, tiny buttons and links, tiny keyboards, etc.
• Connections are still slow.
• Sites that have a mobile specific interface have a higher success rate (64%) compared to regular sites (53%).
• If a site has a mobile version, make it easy to find. Best technique is to auto-sense users’ devices and auto-forward mobile users to the mobile site. Additionally, make sure to include links to “mobile site” and “full site” to allow users to switch.
• Touch-screen phones perform better.

NYPL Mobile

Congrats to NYPL for the beta release of a fantastic NYPL mobile website!

They call it a “very rough beta” but I didn’t see anything rough about it. Not only does it do a great job in providing key information (browse events, contact information, library locations, hours, & directions) in an easily navigable way but it also has a mobile-friendly way to begin a search of the collections (they’re still working on making all of their catalogs mobile-friendly). I particularly like that they managed to include branding and style that is consistent with the rest of their web presence… just because something is scaled down doesn’t mean it can’t have style.

See the NYPL Labs blog post by Michael Lascarides for more information about the interface and some of the work that went into it.

DCPL iPhone app

I’m also late in congratulating the DCPL on their cool Catalog iPhone application. You can read more about it at Aaron Schmidt’s walking paper blog and the DCPL Labs iphone page.

See also my flickr collection of mobile library interfaces.

The latest Horizon Report has just been released.

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.

I always enjoy reading these reports but I found this one especially in sync with my current interest and work concerning mobile technologies. The report lists mobile technology as one of the technologies that will become much more integrated into learning environments within the next year. It’s not new news that mobile devices are ubiquitous on campus and beyond, but with the recent improvements in the technology (faster networks, GPS, integration of more multi-functionality), we will likely seen more and more mobile-friendly websites and services specifically designed for mobile users.

About the project | CommentPress version | PDF

Tutorial blog put together a nice list of tutorials, graphics, and code to help with developing for the iPhone.

http://tutorialblog.org/designing-for-the-iphone-resources/

I’d also add 2 nice omnigraffle stencils: Ultimate iPhone Stencil and Mobile – iPhone.

I’m in the middle of reading Cameron Moll’s Mobile Web Design book and the first couple of chapters do a fantastic job of putting mobile use in context. One of the citations lead me to Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users (Jan 2008). Here are some highlights from that blog post (though I highly recommend reading all of it):

“Real Networks reported in 2007 that 25% of all mobile phone users around the world access the internet on their phones. That is a staggering 825 million people already.”

“63% of all people who access the internet do so from their phones at least part of the time”

“…projected that to be 2.4 billion active users of SMS texting at the end of 2007″ “So one in three people on the planet already uses SMS text messaging.” compared to “800 million active users of email”

And then there’s this little nugget from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Best Application UIs of 2008:

“Although dedicated mobile apps are not yet good enough to win in their own right, it was striking how many of this year’s winners have a mobile component. Mobile is definitively the trend to watch for next year, and any application owner should think hard about whether and how to add mobile features in 2009.”

Continuing my recent mobile trend I thought I’d look at some library catalogs that offer mobile interfaces. here’s a collection of screen shots of a few library catalogs that offer mobile interfaces (as seen on the iphone).

Click the images below or just go to my flickr Library Catalog Mobile Interfaces set

University of Virginia Libraries

VIRGO Catalog

UVa uses the Usablenet Transcoder service. The service is a “server-based tool that generates a customizable “text-only” view of your content, instantly…[to] display your current content in the best possible textual format to be accessed by disabled visitors and PDAs and cell phones users.” Unfortunately, I don’t think that mobile needs and accessibility needs are identical. Every page contains full site navigation which requires the mobile user to scroll down 2-3 screen lengths every time a new page loads before they can get to the content. Also problematic is that the search results page doesn’t include the item title (!) and the item record view is unnecessarily cluttered with tons of information. The transcoder site says it’s customizable so maybe with some more effort this could be a viable technique.

University of Richmond Libraries

UR LibMobile: Catalog

Richmond also uses a service that creates the mobile interface: Google mobile optimizer but this one works much better than Usablenet transcoder. I appreciate that the buttons and fields are big enough to easily click without zooming. The search results gives all the most important bits of information including availability and location. The main negative is that it unnecessarily retains a lot of the extra functionality of the regular catalog (like refining searches, saving to bookbag, etc) that makes scanning more difficult. These features might be nice to have via a mobile device, but they are definitely nonessential and would need to be redesigned and incorporated into the mobile environment.

Ball State

www.bsu.edu/libraries/MOPAC

The search page is good because it just offers a few basic search options. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working very well because I tried many searches (usability, web, science, engineering) and none of them produced any results. Finally, a search for keyword=english produced many results. Unfortunately (again), there is no search results list and you have to scroll through each item one by one. Even if the search was performing correctly, you’d be lucky if the item you wanted was in the first 10 results!

Nashville Public Library

waldo.library.nashville.org/airpac/jsp/airpacIndex.jsp

Nashville Public Library uses airpac (from Innovative Interfaces). This seems to be a popular option because I found that quite a few other libraries use it as well.

The search interface is nice and simple. The search results page is almost too simple and only gives very limited information (title & year). Overall, not too many complaints for this one… it’s just a little lackluster.

NCSU Libraries

www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/

MobiLIB is NCSU’s home grown mobile application and is (not too surprisingly) the best of the bunch. It’s obvious that they’ve put a good deal of thought and time into their product. The search is simple and I especially appreciate the option to restrict to items currently available because if you’re standing in the stacks looking something up on your phone, your likely to only want things currently available! The search results page is also very nice in that the items are formatted to aid reading and scanning and it gives the most important information (title, location, availability, and call number). Unlike the other interfaces, the only time I had to zoom in to read the text was on the item record page because of the item’s long title.