Japanese web and user interface design/branding firm Information Architects have a mini-manifesto called The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard that is making the rounds. Library websites could learn a few things from this list. Be sure to click through to the article to see their design philosophy in action and read some details about each of their points. But no calling me out about the default text size of this site!
Most websites are crammed with small text that is a pain to read. Why?
Don’t tell us busy pages look better
Crowded websites don’t look good, they look nasty.
Don’t tell us lots of links work better
Filling pages with stuff has never helped usability. It’s lazyness that makes you throw all kinds of stuff at us. We want you to think and preselect what is important. We don’t want to do your work.
Don’t tell us to adjust the font size
We don’t want to change our browser settings every time we visit a website!
Don’t tell us scrolling is bad
Because then all websites are bad. There is nothing wrong with scrolling. Nothing at all. Just as there is nothing wrong with flipping pages in books.
Don’t tell us text is not important
95% of what is commonly referred to as web design is typography.
Don’t tell us to get glasses
Rather stop licking your screen, lean back(!) and continue reading in a relaxed position.
There is no reason for cramming information onto the screen. It’s just a stupid collective mistake.
Again, read the full article, The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard.
Trendy is a dirty word in libraries, isn’t it? It conjures up thoughts of sinking resources into flash in the pan ideas, harebrained schemes and jumping off of the bridge just because the cool kids are doing it. Even though many librarians would have us be above all of that, libraries still contain all sorts of fad-driven content: The DaVinci Code, CrazyNew Miracle Diet, Oprah’s Sad Book of the Month and so forth all take up valuable shelf space. The greater world of publishing has an effect on people’s tastes and libraries respond. That’s not so radical, is it? And if not, can’t we be just as trendy in our other services and things we do?
All of that for a simple link and some images. Via del.icio.us somewhere, here’s the Web 2.0 Badge Photoshop Tutorial. In just a few minutes I made these:
If you like any of these, please, use them! To put it at the upper-right of a webpage, use something like this:
<div style="position:absolute;top:0;right:0;float:right">link to image here</div>. Here’s the image as a photoshop document if you want to make it say something else or change the color.
Librarians live in between realizing that libraries are a growing organism and embracing every next new hotness. But a simple image can spruce up your website and is a lot easier to remove than 16 copies of Tuesdays with Morrie.
Happy Friday!
There is a fair amount of grumbling going on about the marketing of the Gap’s website redesign. signal vs noise and Power to the People take issue with this big, orange statement from the Gap website.
The comment quoted by signal vs noise sums it up well:
They’re saying the right things, only they’ve got them backwards. “Latest technologies”, “innovative tools,” and “new features” are pretty much meaningless if the “shopping experience” isn’t better. Now, I don’t want to pick on Gap, but this illustrates (rather well) the point I’m trying to make: Put the people first, then devise simple solutions — the experience is what matters.
This sentiment is really useful not only for our library websites, but our institutions as well. This just another way to state the importance of putting our focus on our users. All of the great technology in our libraries shouldn’t exist for its own sake, but rather should exists because it helps.
However, regarding their criticism of the Gap’s placement of emphasis, I’m not convinced that we need to be telling our patrons that we’re attempting to create an experience. People don’t really want to be told that they are going to have an experience. Talk of experience in PR can smack of marketing jargon and be a major turn off. In other words, it isn’t useful for an institution to proclaim, “We’re user-centered,” or “Come here for an experiential transaction.” Customers and library patrons know full well if an institution is user-centered or if they’ve had an experiental transaction without (or in spite of) being told that they’ve had an experience.
What are we supposed to tell our patrons then? If and only if it were true, I think one great slogan for our libraries would be:
Libraries. We’re easy.
It’s short, catchy, to the point and memorable. The rest of the story would be told with our actions. We’ve got a ways to go before we can pull that one out.
