Collection Development for My Random Life.

Just back from session 1 where as a group we redesigned federated search results pages. That was fun. Biggest outcome was the suggestion of a Pandora like results page with a HOT/NOT LIKE/DISLIKE option to help refine the search results to the users needs like Pandora does with music.

Session 2 about WorldCat Local is starting. Already heard from a few librarians in the last session about pushback from librarians about WCL. One library backtracked away from WCL as their federated search and is going back to their meta-search tool.  Good to hear that these critical discussions are taking place. Hopefully they might occur in my library about whether WCL is ready for prime-time yet.

Tags: coherence, OnlineNW, searching, users

Wow. Trials and tribulations getting to Corvallis this morning. I kerangged! my toe on the metal frame of the bed I am sleeping on before I left. I think blood is pooling my shoe as we speak. I will have to check on it after the conference. But if you are reading this at the conference and you want to see me in person… just look for the limping guy. Actually it is probably just a tiny scratch but it still is bothersome.

Traffic in Eugene got crazy for a bit. Reminded me of my good old days in California. Then I almost missed my gas is extremely extremely low light. Luckily I caught that in time and filled up but it totally destroyed my carefully timed itinerary

Finally, I almost caused a traffic accident right in front of the conference venue when I couldn’t figure out the traffic flow around a stop sign. Oh well, I am here in one piece… mostly (except for my toe).

Listening to the keynote speaker Brandon Schaur from Adaptive Path talking about user experience. Right now he is point is that we need to be strategic to make user experience best.  I will just type some bon mots from the talk:

• There is also no such thing as 100% usability. Good point.
• Need to know your core audience and develop toward that.
• Applications should be understandable.
• Simple tasks should be simple.
• Need to know audience or else you will develop the entirely wrong experience. Waste of time and effort (and money!)
• What is the chance of “realworld” success?
• Four experience hacks:- 1. “Get empathy in your organization” – YOU ARE NOT THE USER – spend time with your user, look at their behaviors and motives.
• The “experience is the product” -
• “Tell me about that last time you used the (thing you want to know about)”.  - Get rich data

<working on a activity for user empathy. I am using our University 106 Library course as my example. The idea is to look for intersections between needs of users and organization as well as effort is a good fit>

• 2nd hack – Define the experience a user will have.
• What works for one product might not work for another
• Brand = Mission – How should you look/feel/talk/style guidelines… very little brand/mission talk about how you interact (i.e. “experienced principles” based on brand/mission)
• Experienced Principle: Is it memorable, is it ispira inspirational tional, is it differentiating (yours is different and recognizable)
• people remember the highest or lowest experiences (good/bad) and how it ended.  - Let them leave happy. End strong and be strong at what you are good at
• 3rd Experience Hack  - Have lots of ideas. <well I am good at that >
• Book recommendation: Myths of Innovation by O’Reilly
• How to let go of the 1st idea — being willing to move on to find better ideas to solve issue. Make multiple drafts… each different.  This would be good to do with websites. Let go of original constraining frame.

<Our activity now – Redesign Facebook  for our organization>

• Watching a ball move back and forth helps connect your left/right brain?  (need to find this psychological study)
• should prototype what you know least about – not what you already know – that is what you need to test after all
• go right to the problem you don’t know
• Experience Hack#4:  return to the user’s context. often
• book recommendation: Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers
• user, your solution, and user’s context need to intersect
• make it a “reversible pilot” project – try it out and see
• dry-run-of-one – bring user in to try it out

Lot’s to digest here. Good stuff.

Tags: coherence, context, OnlineNW, users

Currently, I am reading Burn Collector (#14) by Al Burian. I was struck by something he mentioned Danial Clowes said  in relation to reading, technology, and comic books:

As we enter, voiceless and impotent, a digital age of “instant access” (or constant access) the fragile chemistry of this, our hand-held, non-automatic pictorial narrative device and its inherently sublime nuances (the texture and silence of the pages and our profound trust in processed wood pulp to convey those charms without threat of mechanical failure or chirping sounds) appear to be in grave danger.

This got me to thinking of reading in age of ebooks and computers. Books don’t require electricity (sure they require a light source to read by). Books don’t give off heat like my netbook does. Books don’t make lame noises. Books don’t require a wireless connection or subscription. These are definitely different aesthetics in each mode of reading. I also wonder which has more of an environment impact? How many wires, signals, and electricity is expended to make an e-book work seamlessly with a device as opposed to that of a print book? How much money is spent in buying a device, paying for a subscription service, and building a network/device? Are there unintended consequences  to society in moving to”electronic reading”? Who knows… What I do know is that I would rather read this blog online than in print but at the same time I would prefer to read Burn Collector in all it wood pulp hand-held glory.

Tags: books, ebooks, literacy, reading