Too much? Too little? Just right?

While the idea of enriching the OPAC sounds great, I find myself thinking that there is only so much that one can do that will reach the middle of the ground user.  The new bells and whistles that the Deng article "Beyond the OPAC" suggests range in complexity and use.  Not all features will be used or even should be used by all patrons.  But so long as a critical mass of patrons use the new advantages made available by a retooling of the OPAC in the ways Deng illustrates, it very well could be worth the man power and time involved to create and maintain such features.

However, it would certainly not be enough to build this amazing new search tool and then simply sit back and wait, like Kevin Costner in a late 80's movie, for them to come.  Students, especially in the digital age, desire and expect quick and easy results.  They will follow the path of least resistance to gain info that works, not necessarily keep searching for the best info out there.  Additionally, Mooers' Law comes into play, in that giving patrons all this access to new forms of information and new ways of getting the info both old and new may be more of a nuisance than not having the info.  Especially with long standing researchers, any change, especially drastic ones, means a time of adjustment and perhaps disenchantment with the system.

All of that being said, it is still the best course of action to innovate and push things forward, so long as some of the time and effort being spent is used in utilization study to help craft something that will both be useful and stand the test of time, even in the ever changing world of the internet and information search and retrieval.

It's all about the HCI

Initially, the point that the Zhang et al. article was making was to me, a no brainer.  Of course one must consider human computer interaction when developing systems!  But then, this is perhaps the librarian in me talking.  In all of the libraries in which I have worked, the human customer has been considered, either the outside customer (patrons) or the inside customer (employees of the library itself).  But I could see how meeting organizational needs might cloud the individual user level from being considered as well as it should be. 

Straight off, I absolutely agree that good Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is vital in the day and age when individuals more often than not will be handling their own needs instead of consulting an employee or professional.  Typically individuals would like to be able to do something quickly, do it themselves, and if possible, do it anywhere they like with their smartphones. 

As I am going through the article, the paradigms defined by Hirscheim and Klein seem to me to be too harsh and lacking in gray area.  They may be useful as tools of analytical thought when applied to the creation of systems, but strike me as something that should not be followed blindly.  Especially when dealing with the paradigms that seek to abolish or transcend the status quo.  In many situations, there are good things about existing systems that should be carried into the new way of doing things.  Especially within the world of library systems, many patrons are long time users of certain technological features that expect certain services to work in certain basic ways.  Mucking about with this too much seems to me a recipe for disaster where the patron researcher ends up confused or upset, and possibly goes elsewhere with their information needs.

Something missing from the article is simply because it is a product of its time.  Published in 2005, it predates the era of the ubiquitous personal smart phone, which has greatly enhanced the place of the individual in the information systems services world.  It occurs to me that much of the neglect of HCI addressed by Zhang may not in fact still be occurring as regularly within systems development due to a new heightened awareness of the need for it.

For instance, app creation and use is a massive new enterprise that is being taken up not only by institutions but also by private companies and even private individuals, then being sold to the information systems providers.  Due to the very personal nature of the smartphone version of HCI, everyone is attempting to insert concern for the human factor into each step in the development of systems, not merely in design as an afterthought.

That being said, many of the tried and true standards that are mentioned still hold great value in systems development.   The International Standards Organization dictating defining usability as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use” still does and will continue to work.

Would the systems development life cycle look drastically different today in the more streamlined and robust digital age that we are now in compared to the nascent one that existed in 2005 at the time of the article’s publishing?  I’m lead to believe that it wouldn’t.  The basic ideas laid out by Cervone in 2007 are all still true.  Outside of the technological side of things, the considerations about money, time, and delivering a product that simply fits the needs of the users and the organization that will provide the system are still valid.  Of course, the metrics one might use to evaluate the system may change as expectations of users change.  And that would be something that should be kept in mind as the existing “new” system becomes the “old” system and a new team along the lines of what Cervone describes is pulled together to develop yet another new system. 

All in all, I very much agree with the whole of Zhang and its close agreement with the steps Cervone outlines.  The HCI is certainly now, if it hasn’t always ever been, the central focus of what the systems development life cycle hinges upon.  Any other way and you end up with a mess that no one likes and some outright refuse to use, then you’re back to the drawing board again, sooner and with less resources and time to spend due to not getting it right in the first place.