If you haven’t seen the new Amazon Windowshop site, you gotta click on over right away. This is where we are going. It’s a complete experience. The user has complete control plus it has audio (music and spoken word) AND it includes great CD and book cover images as well as movie clips. Using space bar to get a bigger view of the items grouped together. Click the space bar again to zoom in. It’s fun, it looks great and it walks and talks and sings!
Oh, and you can click on stuff to buy it or download it. So, it’s simple too.
Now, while you are there…think about this. Imagine that (as you click the right arrow key) you are scrolling through material from your catalog in Dewey order (okay, imagine something even better than Dewey). Using the up arrow key takes you to related material (e.g. “See Also”).
I’m thinking this would make a very nice addition to Amazon’s Web Services product offering.

I’ve been enjoying playing around with Facebook the last few weeks and one of the things I really like about it is the control I have over who I connect with, information I share with different groups of people, what applications I can install and how I organize them on my public site and my internal site.
And those applications – there are tons of them because anyone can write one. Facebook provides great tools for potential Facebook developers. And each app is a breeze to install. I can click to install it, then play around with it to see what it does. If I don’t like it, I just delete it and poof its gone. It’s sooooper easy to experiment…and play!
So, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if the library website worked like this? I could make connections with other library people, share book lists, install and play silly games, send little notes and pokes to people, publish my own personal news feed that others who thought I was interesting could subscribe to. I could share pictures and videos and poetry and excerpts from my favorite books and perhaps even create my own applications to share.
I encourage you to get on Facebook if you aren’t already using it and while you’re playing around, networking, and doing whatever you end up doing with your Facebook account….imagine it being provided by your local library — LibBook. LibBook would have a focus on local events and bookish things rather than dating, and gossip. Instead of being fans of musical groups and TV shows, users might be be fans of books and authors. Instead of finding long lost classmates, users would be finding people with shared interests who are just across town or up the road.
Any LibBook developers out there?

I love this quote from Tim Berners-Lee in an interview with Mark Lawson at BBC News when he was asked if the Web was really worth the trouble (e.g. identity theft, pornography):

“I feel that we need to individually work on putting good things on it, finding ways to protect ourselves from accidentally finding the bad stuff, and that at the end of the day, a lot of the problems of bad information out there, things that you don’t like, are problems with humanity.

This is humanity which is communicating over the web, just as it’s communicating over so many other different media. I think it’s a more complicated question we have to; first of all, make it a universal medium, and secondly we have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Good news from Jakob Nielsen (via Web4Lib). In Alertbox July 31, 2006, Nielsen (Web Usability Expert and author of Useit.com) suggests Web designers should “Optimize Web pages for 1024×768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800×600 to 1280×1024.”

Nielsen states that 60% of all monitors are set at 1024×768 and only 17% are now set at 800×600. I’m thinking that after this last round of Gates Foundation Public Access Computer Hardware Upgrade Grants even library monitors might be set at 1024×768. I hope so.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m relieved because it means I can stop having those arguments with my Web designers about how important it is to design for 800×600 which is, I agree, dang ugly on a finer resolution monitor. Hoooo haaa!

In his March 14, 2005 Alertbox article Lower-Literacy Users, Jakob Nielsen reports that the reading behaviors of lower-literacy users is different from higher-literacy users and offers up some suggestions for website designers.

Unlike higher-literacy users, lower-literacy users cannot scan text. Instead, they must read word for word. Nielsen describes this process as ?plowing? the text. When plowing text, users are unlikely to notice elements of the page outside of the text because their field of view is so narrow.

They are also unable to scan navigational aids to select the one most appropriate for their need. Instead, they must consider each option one at a time, or to simply skip over numerous items when the options become overwhelming.

Lower-literacy users also tend to skip over text when it becomes too dense. Scrolling is also problematic because the ability to keep track of where one is on the page as it scrolls down requires scanning, which lower-literacy users cannot do.

Another problem is the search box. If the search box requires perfect spelling, it is unlikely that a lower-literacy user will have much success.

Nielsen provides suggestions for making a website more manageable for lower-literacy users including the following:

? Simplify the text.
? Prioritize information
? Avoid text that moves or changes
? Streamline the page design
? Simplify navigation
? Optimize search

Simplify the text: Nielsen recommends making the text on the home page to a 6th grade reading level. Other pages should not exceed an 8th grade reading level.

Prioritize information: To prioritize information means to put the most important information at the very top of the page. While this is consistent with usability guidelines for all users, it is important to utilize the first two lines because lower-literacy users are likely to give up after plowing through the first two lines of text. Nielsen recommends eliminating scrolling entirely (which will benefit both teenage users and lower-literacy users).

Avoid text that moves or changes:Animations and fly-out menus are particularly difficult for lower-literacy users and should be avoided. Nielsen points out that these features are also problematic for international users and users with motor skill impairments.

Streamline the page design: Nielsen recommends steering clear of multiple column layouts because a single main column will make it easier for the lower-literacy user to pick out design elements. He notes that this type of simplified design will also benefit the users viewing the site via a handheld device such as their phone or PDA.

Simplify navigation: The simplest form of navigation is when the main choices are placed linearly in a menu bar. Again, the goal is to avoid the need to scan the page looking for navigational elements.

Optimize search: Nielsen recommends adding features that make the search box more forgiving of people who might not be able to spell the item they are seeking or are more inclined to make typos. This includes seniors and lower-literacy users. Spell-check, stemming, truncation, and fuzzy searches are some of the ways a search box can be made more user friendly.

Nielsen argues that making web sites more usable for lower-literacy users will make them more usable for higher literacy users as well. He provides documentation to prove the accuracy of his hypothesis.

As institutions very much involved in promoting literacy, it is important that library websites address the needs of lower-literacy users.

Every library should evaluate their site to ensure that their website is free of characteristics that are particularly difficult for lower-literacy users including confusing layout, sophisticated or text-heavy pages, or required scrolling to get to the most important links. While implementing advanced search features is challenging, all the other suggestions are easy-to-implement and every library will should see about incorporating them immediately.

Imagine a world where patrons could save their bookmarks and the data they provide on online forms would be pre-filled the next time they were asked for that data….where passwords they’d set up on websites would be remembered for them….just like our home PCs! And now imagine that there was a way to do this that was completely secure, portable and affordable. Well, that’s my take on the AxisCard.

It’s a cool new product from Offshoot Systems. I’ve met Mr. Offshoot Systems and he’s a fine upstanding citizen looking to make a contribution to the library world. He gave me a demo of the card here at my local Starbucks/Hot Spot. It’s pretty slick and it made me wish everyone had them in their libraries (and any other place offering public access computers).

And there’s another aspect to the card that has me intrigued…you see, there’s an opportunity here for libraries to painlessly generate revenue from these cards if we combine the Shop for The Library concept in with these cards. Here’s how it would work.

When the patron sits down at your PAC and slips in their customized AxisCard (with your library’s “skin” or branding), a special toolbar pops up that contains their bookmarks, perhaps a special set of bookmarks you’ve provided and a QuickLink bar. This QuickLink bar is a small, inconspicuous set of shortcuts to shopping sites like Ebay, Amazon.com, Smith&Hawkin, Petaluma Feed & Grain…you know, places everyone visits all the time. Anyway, it’s just a feature that is built into the cards that maybe you wouldn’t even pay attention to if you didn’t care.

BUT, imagine if everytime a patron used the quicklaunch bar to visit ebay, you got a kickback from ebay?! That’s how the Shop for Your Library thing works. It doesn’t cost anything extra to the patrons but the library benefits from their shopping spree. I don’t know…is this wrong? Seems like a clever idea to me. Now if I could just get someone to try it!