Georgetown University Library Website Redesign: A Case Study
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Kristina Bobe
Steve Fernie
Website Redesign: A Case Study
Will Wheeler
Shian Chang
http://library.georgetown.edu
Introduction
Usability
Task Analysis
Subject Guides
Content Management
Lessons Learned
Communication
(backstage redesign)
Decisions and technology
Know your users...
How are they searching? What do they want to find?
Part of our original charge dictated that the new site should "allow the content and look and feel of the site to be easily updated"
(decide! ... and go on)
At the same time that we were compiling our master task list from in-house sources, we were also engaging in the time honored task of "spying on the competition"
Background to the Redesign:
Speaking the User's Language
Enabled documentation and communication on and
off campus – replacing three other ‘intranets’
An open source authoring platform for subject guides, course guides and general purpose resource guides
Foundational importance of task analysis
Previously, site editors used Dreamweaver to create and make changes to pages
After an extensive survey of other sites, we chose three that we felt offered distinct approaches to their home page organization
(sometimes they used the site template, sometimes not)
Provided a stable environment for documentation and creative addition,
but organization remained a challenge
Chat Questions
Catalog Searches
Shifting roles: User-centered design as leading principle
How can we better implement new technologies?
Usability – refining beyond anecdotal data
Developed by the Digital Library Development Laboratory at the University of Minnesota in 2003
After some experimentation with Adobe Contribute, we took the plunge and decided to migrate the site content into a full-fledged content management system
We then stripped them of all pretension, and tested them on groups of patrons guerilla style
Enabled small group work, but idiosyncratic
thinking sometimes limited cross-group collaboration
Wiki – enabled better collaboration,
but not a panacea
Desk Questions
?
Connecting the dots: Resources and users connecting
How can we facilitate access to our diverse information resources for our users?
Google Analytics
Drupal is an extremely flexible open source content management system with an active development community
Built on the Apache, MySQL and PHP development environment
LibData – important step forward, but
illuminative of future needs
Adoption challenges – many users required constant reminders
No one on staff had any experience with Drupal
Currently being ported to Drupal by Minnesota
Drupal – key decision, but a complex change
that has resulted in a slowly-emerging understanding
Tool fatigue – accessibility doesn't equal use
Site Statistics
Reference Questions
("the "4th intranet")
An Abstracted View of Brown University's Home Page
Drupal does very little "out of the box" - nearly everything is in need of customization and configuration, making for a steep learning curve
Why did we choose it?
A set of five open-ended questions that targeted areas of the task list we were struggling with were asked of patrons on each of the three site organizations
Additional functionality is added though the installation and configuration of contributed modules
Previous subject guides and database lists were maintainted in an in-house ColdFusion application
(Our site currently has about 30 of these modules installed)
The answers to our questions guided us though a process of hybridization from which the first prototypes of our site organization emerged
Needed to balance decision between ease of formatting and customization versus ease of importing previous guide data and ability to export data out
Insights gained were used to refine the language used and the location of links
Breaking Down the Tasks to Chart the Navigation of the Site
What Library Staff Hear...
What IT staff say...
Ultimately, choice was made on the basis of a platform with an accessible database back-end
Our Approach to Usability Was a Bit Like This...
The process of selecting modules can spark a proliferation of decisions which must be made with only a vague sense of their eventual consequences
Results from usability were also useful in providing non-anecdotal evidence for user behavior
Anatomy of a Customized Guide
"I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices -- made up of likings and dislikings."
The 5 topics covered today:
Master Task List
Usability
Content Management
Subject Guides
Communication
Charles Lamb
That being said, the ability to manipulate content with Drupal without any custom programming is considerable and has been well worth the investment in time