Discussion
Oct. 1, 2012 meeting: Nicole, Stephanie, Lisa

These drafts are based on:

  • input from our Sept. card-sorting survey
  • looking at some peer institutions
  • knowledge of our own services and what the Libraries want to promote.

Card-sorting results: 
Results were all over the map with many different ideas, names and solutions for grouping much of the info on our site. Our 40 users came up with over 200 different category names! There was conceptual agreement around 3 areas: (search/find/catalogs), (library locations & hours), and (about us/general info).  There was not a lot of agreement about all of our guides and help and other services, such as publishing, video support, etc.

We also asked them: "what are the top 3 things you come to the MIT Libraries website to do or find?" Highest counts were for:

  • finding e-resources
  • looking up known items in Barton
  • requesting items from other libraries
  • hours
  • Barton Your Account features (renewals, holds, due dates, etc)

(they used their own language to describe all of these things)

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Considerations:
A. Navbars follow you wherever you go (on most pages) and serve as useful, quick ways to get to frequently used pages.

B. Categories on the home page have a dual purpose: 1) to show what the libraries are about and can do for you, and 2) they provide a quick way to get to frequently used pages.

... therefore.... should the home page categories always match exactly the 2nd level nav bars? (maybe, maybe not)

C. We may want to use this as an opportunity to emphasize some of the things we do for people that are beyond how they usually think of libraries. (personal content management, scholarly publishing support, managing data, etc).

D. We can still add links in the upper bar for certain important things we want to call out, such as Ask Us! (in addition to the navbar links)

Navbar draft 1

Search  |  Locations/Hours  |  Borrow/Request  |  Research Support  |  Recommended Tools  |  About Us

Navbar draft 2

Search  |  Locations/Hours  |  Using the Libraries  |  Help  |  Recommended Tools  |  About Us

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Areas of agreement

1. We agree that there needs to be a Search category. Later it may become a "discovery" search box that gets embedded into the top of pages. For now it could have a drop-down nav with names similar to our home page search box tabs. We didn't discuss yet whether this page (or a new version of it) should continue to exist: http://libraries.mit.edu/search/index.html

2. We agree that there needs to be a Locations/Hours category. It will contain links to each library location and hours, and also links to info about visiting non-MIT libraries, study spaces, and all things involving the use of our physical spaces.

3. We agree that there needs to be an About Us category. This is something people come to expect on every site and can hold all the general information that doesn't fit into other categories, such as staff directories, jobs, giving, etc. We would probably tweak the list of things on this page: http://libraries.mit.edu/about/about.html

4. It would be great to have a category for Recommended Tools, since we are in the business of recommending lots of useful tools and we want to promote that as something we do. Many of these tools are very useful for research and we offer workshops and guides on how to use them.

This could include:
- Your account (Barton.... again, since it's so useful)
- Browser extensions, toolbars, widgets (LibX and more)
- Personal content management (see new guide we have for this)
- Citation software: EndNote, RefWorks, Zotero, Mendeley
- Apps for Academics
- Keeping up with research: email and RSS alerts
- RSS feeds for new books
- Betas: experimental services & tools
- Bioinformatics tools
- Data management tools
- GIS tools
- Social Science Data tools
  ... etc.

Areas we have different ideas about

5. We would like a category for "getting your stuff." We struggled with what to call it. 

a. Borrow/Request or b. Using the Libraries
This would contain info such as:
- Your account (Barton)
- Get books and articles delivered from non-MIT libraries: ILB, Borrow Direct
- Requesting/borrowing (from Circ FAQ)
- Course Reserves
- Suggest a purchase
   ...etc.

6. We would like a category for all of our help options and research support (including publishing), and we recommend putting all options into one category, whether they are mediated, or self-help.

a. Research Support or  b. Help
This would include info such as:
- Ask Us!
- Research Guides by Subject
- Publishing help (there could be a whole section of the page for publishing links)
- Library classes & workshops (need a better page for these)
- Data: finding & managing
- Research consultations
- Subject experts, Ask the Expert 
- Specifications for Thesis Prepartion (one of the top most hit pages on our site)
.... etc.

We could make a nicely organized page that groups all of this stuff in sensible ways. (there are lots more of these kinds of pages)

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UX staff: Please give us your feedback and comments in the comment box below. Thanks!

1. Do you agree with the high-level concepts? (six categories)
2. Do you agree with the category names? Do you have other ideas for the category names?

NOTE: We will test these drafts this month, using an online survey tool called TreeJack. We'll recruit a different set of users than the ones who did the first card-sorting test.

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6 Comments

  1. Nicole Gail E Hennig

    Remember, whatever we pick for these drafts will be tested and we can revise later this month. (Just testing the comments box).

  2. Remlee S Green

    Wow, this is great!!!  And so well organized.  Thanks for doing all of this work, guys!

    1. The 6 high-level concepts sound good to me.  I glanced through the site index, just to think about how I'd classify our existing pages, and the concepts worked pretty well.  I really love the "recommended tools" concept!! 

    2. For the category names, I'd prefer "&"s than "/"s (ex., Locations & Hours, not Locations/Hours), because I think it's easier to comprehend and scan.

    I'd vote for "Borrow & Request" over "Using the Libraries," because Using the Libraries could mean anything.

    "Research Support" vs. "Help" is tough.  Research Support feels more accurate, but people might comprehend Help quicker.  I'm slightly leaning toward Research Support.  Is "Help & Research Support" too long? 

    So my menu would look like Navbar draft 1, but with ampersands: 

    Search  |  Locations & Hours  |  Borrow & Request  |  Research Support  |  Recommended Tools  |  About Us

  3. J Darcy Duke

    This is fabulous!

    1. I agree with the high-level category concepts.  Love "Recommended Tools".
    2. I'm leaning towards "Research Support" - lots of help is also included under the "Borrow & Request" category, so I think having a generic "Help" would be confusing.  I kinda like "Using the Libraries" but I think "Borrow & Request" is better since study spaces and searching might also logically fall under "Using the Libraries" and those will fall under other categories in this set up.  I also agree with Remlee's comment about the "&".  

    You raise some good points about the categories on the home page - I think when we redesign that, we will have other ideas/options besides just having lists of links.  So we'll need to decide what is best for the short term, regardless of what we would like to do for the long term. 

    Thank you so much for this great work!

  4. Nicole Gail E Hennig

    OK, I agree with your thoughts. So here's the navbar I propose we test (same as what Remlee said):
    Search  |  Locations & Hours  |  Borrow & Request  |  Research Support  |  Recommended Tools  |  About Us

    I think this order makes sense, too. Darcy and Remlee and I talked about seeing if the designers can put this version in the prototypes that will be tested soon.

    I'm continuing to work with TreeJack to develop part two of our online card-sort test. More on that soon....

  5. Melissa Feiden

    1. I agree, the 6 high-level categories is a good concept that will work for us.
    2. What do you think about flipping "Locations & Hours" to "Hours & Locations."  In your top 3 list above, hours comes out toward the top and I wonder if people will look for that before they look for locations?
    3. I would vote for "Borrow & Request" too.   When I read "Using the Libraries," the first thing I think of is actually using the physical spaces, as opposed to things like online services for managing requests, etc.
    4. I also prefer "Research Support" over "Help," for the reasons already cited.  Help is too broad for this category.

    1. Nicole Gail E Hennig

      I like the idea of flipping "Locations & Hours" to "Hours & Locations."