Day 2, Session 2: "Electronic Resources, UX, and accessibility"

Ranti Junus, MSU

Notes from the presentation

  • MSU did some interesting things in terms of accessiblility testing, including hiring a blind student to test resources 10 hours a week for usability
  • A visually impaired user using a screen reader uses a search results pages much differently than a fully-visually-abled user.
  • it is important to design for the colorblind by deemphasizing meaning through color (or provding other ways for the color meaning to be conveyed for those who can't distinguish between some colors).

Links

Ideas for the JWU Library

  • Try out the WAVE plugin on various JWU Library Web resources

Day 2, Session 3: "Web Scale Discovery with User Testing"

Joseph Deodato-Rutgers University

 

  • Presenter: there is value in partnering with a vendor (vendors get access to users, and librarians can have influence over the product), (although the presenter mentione that they haven't seen any motion on the enhancement requests they sent out as a result of the survey)
  • Following the EBSCO-co-run usability study, Rutgers made changes through the EBSCO-admin module that included removing the right column to increase simplicity, replacing paginated results with infinite scrolling, and changing the default search mode from Boolean/Exact Phrase to Find All My Search Terms).

Links

Ideas for the JWU Library

  • Apply UX-enhancing customizations to the databases to provide a more coherent user experience

Day 2, Session 4: "UX Practices and Strategies Roundtable"

Jessamyn C. West (Librarian & Technologist, Open Library), David Lee King (Digital Services Director, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library), Frank Cervone (Director of IT School of Public Health, UIC)
"Our job is to make things that people are looking for as findable as possible".
Jessamyn West

UX Tips from Jessamyn, David, and Frank

  • Jessamyn: 'our job is to make things that people are looking for as findable as possible' (as opposed to employing the latest 'hotshot design trends')
  • Jessamyn: 'designing for mobile is useful as it helps you narrow it down to what is really neccessary'
  • Frank: In most cases, 'faculty search just like students'
  • Frank: "If you use a discovery layer, IT MUST WORK and work immediately. They should not have to search for the full text that was promised several clicks ago." (once users give up and go to google, it is hard to get them back)
  • David: "My Goal is to get them to click"
  • David: Database/e-resource descriptions are overly wordy. DLK (and Jessamyn) think it would be great if you could just have a description that says "Find It"
  • Davidfront-load the useful informational content in the title/heading (see BBC as a good example...their article titles are descriptive; not cute;) This leads to more informed clicking