Web Site Standards for Usability and Design

Wed Aug 1 10:06:24 EDT 2012

One area that I think rarely gets enough attention in the library world, is design. In fact, libraries, in my opinion, have let their concerns about creating access gateways run amok…to the point that our web sites become so bogged down with gateways, they become obstacles to access.

Dan Brown did an excellent job of wedding 5 basic principles of design to information architecture which I use as a checklist to evaluate any change to our web design (please don't look at our current site. We are migrating to a new design that will incorporate these principles).

http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/eightshapes_db1/

If you pay for the recording, you get a couple extra principles ;)

M Ryan Hess
Web Services Coordinator
DePaul University
JTR 120, DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus, 2350 N Kenmore Ave., Chicago IL 60614
office: 773-325-7829 | cell:  650-224-7279 |  fax: 773-325-2297  | mhess8 at depaul.edu<https://outlook.depaul.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx>

From: Cindy <gealach at GMAIL.COM<mailto:gealach at GMAIL.COM>>
Reply-To: Web technologies in libraries <WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>>
Date: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 11:26 PM
To: "WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>" <WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>>
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] Web Site Standards for Usability and Design

This is a direct link to Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics ( http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html ) and I've found this page extremely helpful in explaining them ( http://designingwebinterfaces.com/6-tips-for-a-great-flex-ux-part-5 ).

Cynthia Zweier

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Nina Mchale <milehighbrarian at gmail.com<mailto:milehighbrarian at gmail.com>> wrote:
UX has had its own day-long track at Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian for the past coupla years; might be worth checking out the presentation archives for quick tips, case studies, and practical examples. Amanda Etches-Johnson's 5-step UX process as presented last October at IL was excellent.

Nina

Nina McHale

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Michael Schofield <mschofield at nova.edu<mailto:mschofield at nova.edu>> wrote:
Hi Carolyn,

There are the stock usability.gov<http://usability.gov> standards, plus a lot of work done by
Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com) as well as the W3C Web Accessibility
Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI). For HTML5 standards and debunking some
element myths, I use http://html5doctor.com/ instead of the hard-to-read W3C
HTML5 spec. There are also good code validators out there. You may want to
familiarize yourself with ARIA Roles, which are useful for allowing screen
readers to make sense of your website. Here's the doc
(http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles).

I'm not sure what you follow or are familiar with, so here are some recent
random resources:

I just read the book "User Experience (UX) Design for Libraries" which,
published this year, is relatively up to date. It's a good jumping-off point
for a library redesign project. It's a quick read and it focuses on
responsive design. Here's the GoodReads Link
(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14905971-user-experience-ux-design-for-l
ibraries).

IMHO, for your library website to live without major subsequent redesigns
for a couple years, your team should really focus on making it
future-friendly and responsive - unless you have another strategy for
serving-up optimized content to multiple devices (maybe you have an app or a
separate mobile site, I don't know).

Andrew Careaga last week posted a future-friendly Friday Five inspired by a
presentation by Dave Olsen (his site, Mobile in Higher
Ed--www.dmolsen.com--is full of resources) that I think is useful:

1. The future-friendly manifesto (http://futurefriend.ly) -> a new[ish],
important design philosophy in the web community.
2. Future-Ready Content
(http://www.alistapart.com/articles/future-ready-content)
3. Mobile web best practices (http://mobilewebbestpractices.com)
4. Mobilekarma.com (http://www.mobilekarma.com/)
5. Go Mobile at Texas A&M: their mobile strategy, WITH A LOT OF RESOURCES
(http://gomobile.tamu.edu/)

Matthew Riedsma posted his ALA Annual presentation on Responsive Web Design
for Libraries here (http://matthew.reidsrow.com/articles/23) and he lists 18
additional resources.

Sorry for the scattered email O_o. Feel free to get in touch with me for,
well, anything.

Michael Schofield | mschofield at nova.edu<mailto:mschofield at nova.edu>
Front-End Librarian at NSU

-----Original Message-----
From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>] On
Behalf Of Blatchley, Carolyn
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 3:55 PM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Web Site Standards for Usability and Design

As we move toward a web site redesign project, I'm looking to the community
for advice on the most current web site standards, specifically those for
public libraries. Do you have a favorite publication or web resource that
you've recently used?

I respect the information outlined at http://www.usability.gov/ and the
related publication found there called "The Research-Based Web Design &
Usability Guidelines, Enlarged/Expanded Edition", but it was issued by the
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services in August 2006 and it seems to me
there could be something more recent.

Looking forward to hearing what others are using!

Carolyn Blatchley
Training Services Coordinator
Cumberland County Library System
1601 Ritner Highway, Suite 100
Carlisle, PA 17013-9380
717.240.5379<tel:717.240.5379> | cblatchley at ccpa.net<mailto:cblatchley at ccpa.net>
cumberlandcountylibraries.org<http://cumberlandcountylibraries.org>

The information in this message may be privileged and confidential and
protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the
intended recipient, nor an employee or agent responsible for delivering this
message to the intended recipient, then you are hereby notified that any
dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this
communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer.  Thank you, Cumberland County,
PA.

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-07-31

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-07-31

--
Nina

Nina McHale, MA/MSLS
milehighbrarian.net<http://milehighbrarian.net>
Facebook & Twitter: @ninermac

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-07-31

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-08-01

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2012-08-01
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.nd.edu/pipermail/web4lib/attachments/20120801/486158ec/attachment.htm>