User Interface Group
November 30 , 2006
User Interface Group
November 30, 2006Present: Maggie Bartley (minutes), Darcy Duke, Lisa Harrington, Nicole Hennig (chair), Lisa Horowitz
1. Update on Moving the Staff Web
Dec. 8 and 9 have been set as the revised dates for moving files to the new staff web. (Note, this has been postponed until January). All forms on the new staff web will be protected by certificates, which will help prevent any the "form spam" we've been getting. Work is progressing to copy those forms first and test them to make sure they all work before moving all the other files. The old files on Macfadden will not be removed until everything has been checked in the new location and we've had time to live with it for a while.
Redirects will be put in place to send people to the new locations if they had any macfadden URLs bookmarked. This redirect process is what's delaying the move. Nicole and team can't move files until this is working and Alex ran into some snags with this, due to the age of the old Macfadden server and some things that had to be updated.
2. RSS Feeds from Barton
There has been general enthusiasm about the new book RSS feeds from Barton. Rich Wenger will work on tweaks for the few glitches that have surfaced. Options for linking to the RSS feeds were discussed. Nicole outlined a plan for publicizing the new feeds.
3. LibX and Other New Betas
Nicole reported on a recent meeting with the graduate student group seeking changes to our library services online. The students were pleased with LibX and other new betas and seem to be growing more appreciative of the difficulties in implementing major changes to our library services online.
The group discussed criteria for graduating a beta. It was agreed that stability of the product, positive feedback from users, and a plan for staff support will be the key attributes of a successful beta. Currently the LibX toolbar and the Dewey Research Advisor are candidates for graduation.
4. Priorities for Future Tasks
The group reviewed the ideas listed on UIG's Ideawiki. Since there are many worthy and interesting ideas on the list, it was agreed that UIG needs to devise a system and criteria for prioritizing them. Nicole shared a listing of the ideas which highlighted their potential place in the larger context of the MIT information environment. Nicole took straw polls of members' thinking about which ideas they would consider to be the "top three" and which the "bottom three." There was wide interest in metalib, the metadata aggregator, the community features and betas.
The group brainstormed criteria for prioritizing tasks. Eleven criteria were proposed.
- high user impact
- solves a problem
- how many people it helps- staff time to implement
- cost to implement
- how easy it is to do?
- skill level that it takes to do it:
- programmer
- librarians
- techie staff
- student
- temp help
- internships- external factors about timing
- things that show our students we're on the cutting edge: BLING!
- things that have been requested by our users
- beneficial to staff workflow (saves time)
- stakeholders: who cares about it (staff or students)
- fun!
It was agreed that UIG would continue to explore these criteria.
Next Meeting: 14 December 2006, 3-4:30, CubeSpace