Usability testing

Approaching the two readings "Why We Are Not Google" from Swanson and Green, and "Website Redesign" from Tolliver et al., I was particularly interested in their conclusions because I view the website as being of primary importance in how patrons interact with the library in the twenty-first century.  In my personal experience, the self service model is how the majority of patrons would like to be able to go through life, be it at the grocery store or at the library.  Just as people need food, patrons need information.  It is quicker and easier to find and select both on one's own without the help of specialists, and indeed at both the grocery and library it is often now possible to "check out" without an employee, making the whole experience completely independent.

That being said, the information that one might get on one's own in the library is much dependent on how intuitive the technologies are that enable resource finding and consumption.  This is where website usability comes in.  Do patrons know enough or can learn enough on the fly to successfully make the best possible use of library resources?  Let's see what the two papers in question say.

First off, I like that the testers in the Tolliver article have multiple steps to their testing that each produce different concrete results that can be sorted and analyzed.  The specificity of issues found with the website was intriguing as well.  The trouble some patrons had because “borrowing materials” didn’t suggest checking out books, and looking for “my account” when the wording on the page was in fact “your account”.  It may sound trite, but in my own personal experience it is precisely these types of little things that add up to usability.  I was, however, surprised that they used student assistants and employees of the library, rather than actual student patrons that had no other connection to the library.  Surely they should have included that, their largest patron base.  The article also did not emphasize much where to go from there, once they had their website’s usability analyzed.  There was scant info on how to go about acting upon the information found, though I recognize that perhaps that would be a totally different study and article in and of itself.  

The Swanson et al. article was particularly apt, especially considering that I had just used a relatively new google-esque search box on the front page of Catholic University’s library website to find the article itself.  Two things immediately came to my mind upon finishing the article.  First, that obviously serious academic research is a discipline that necessitates at the very least some training to be able to make use of the many information finding resources that are available on a library webpage.  Second, that having the option of a well-placed federated search box on the homepage, as well as the links to the various databases, OPAC, and finding aids would probably be the best decision.  Why must it be one or the other?  Serious researchers who plan to dive straight into the databases don’t like having to delve through multiple pages of the library website in order to get started, and the casual patron can start with the search box.  However, there is the risk with that option that some that are less educated in the options available to them might believe that their search was futile and not realize there is another way.  I would make sure to have alerts and options clearly present to enable the patron to switch research modes at any time. 

I do agree with their ultimate conclusion that the academic library website and search is not, and should not be Google.  The nature of academic research lends itself to being so much more than that.  But that is not to say that there could be an option there to use a federated search, just in case they are attempting to find something specific, just as I was when I needed to look up two articles for class.  Quite literally, in my case, the success I had in being able to find my ends quickly justified the less scholarly means I took to get there.

 

Thoughts on Hirshorn and Liu

My immediate reaction to both of these articles was a personal one.  I had noticed that they had both been published back in 2008, and could not help but compare their visions of the future to what I desired and encountered as a 21^st century student researcher using the webpages of multiple schools and different organizations.  In some ways, they were spot on.  Other predictions seem to me to be a bit off the mark, however.

Environment Scan, by Hirshon, first off struck me by the fact that it has a very “outside looking in” perspective when it came to discussing Generation Y.  Using phrases such as “to reach generation Y”, it made it sound as if the author were an anthropologist describing their attempts at communicating with a remote jungle tribe.  If a birth year of 1982 is used as the beginning of generation Y (as is fairly common) then in 2008 there would be fully educated adults that could’ve assisted the author in providing concrete answers and examples of what it was his/her generation wanted and expected.  Instead the article uses broad generalizations based on other articles. 

As I mentioned above, some of the prognostications seemed a bit off to me.  One stand out idea was that of avatars becoming a normal part of online interaction.  With the advent of software like Skype and Facetime, the up and coming generation will come to expect not some graphical representation of a person or themselves, but an actual videochat/conference face to face with the real thing.  Additionally, one of the greatest impediments to the realm of virtual reference is the lack of non-verbal cues when trying to assist patrons.  Via chat and email both, nuance is lost when providing information and instruction.  An avatar would not be able to provide anywhere near as much information as a real person could about how the reference interview was going. 

The gaming and social networking emphasis by the articles also is not quite right.  While aspects of both can be applied to the web presence of academic libraries (and other institutions), I find that in fact the rising generation compartmentalizes their lives within the virtual realm.  They’ll facebook and tumblr, but they don’t necessarily want to do so with their employers or their schools.  Adding a social component to the catalogs and research portals of the library however, would strike more of a chord than would the library attempting to connect with patrons via the social networks that they use strictly for social purposes. 

The Liu article takes some of the general observations of the Hirshon article and applies it practically to the homepage of an academic library.  Liu is definitely on the right track in pointing out that what the newest generation of researchers will be expecting is a “seamless, one-stop information environment that minimizes users’ way-finding effort and nutures the formation and dissemination of knowledge, ideas, and experiences”.   Now that the web 2.0 idea is a number of years old and interacting with the virtual environment of web pages is the norm, personalization of a research portal in an effort to make information searches as painless and as accurate as possible would indeed be extremely attractive to the digital native generation.  That being said it is important that the personalization be quick and easy, and also a one-time thing, in which past customizations can be permanent yet changeable, and research history can be saved.

Liu also goes into great detail to design and describe the perfect layout and content of the ideal academic library homepage.  Again he uses the emphasis on ease of use that is of such importance to 21^st century researchers’ choice of online tools as a guide to how a page should be laid out.  All the functionalities should be as intuitive as possible and when it comes to navigation, need as few clicks as possible, as few page jumps and scrolling as possible.

There is one important aspect to all of this that the Liu article did not address, namely that of the promotion needed to ensure that students are actively going to the library webpage in order to do their research.  I cannot help but reflect upon what my alma mater and recent employer, University of Maryland, College Park, has recently done.  Upon finding that many students are simply googling rather than going to the OPAC, they have totally gone all in with OCLC’s Worldcat, providing a UMCP skin on Worldcat local to guide patrons to the resources they need.  The old catalog is still there, but is no longer the main focus.  Why the switch?  Worldcat entries for items show up in google searches.  The idea being, no longer can we expect the patrons to come to the library even virtually (library homepage on the web), the library must go to where the patrons are (Google).

The beginning...

This is a test!  Need a blog for class, and here it is!  Exciting times!