Present:
Hennig (chair), Duke, Edelman, Quirion, Skuce (minutes)
1. WAG
continued to make refinements to the new home page design, based
on results from our usability tests. One of our biggest changes is
the proposed renaming and realignment of 2 major home page categories.
Nicole will mock up a few pages to reflect how such changes would
be reflected at other levels of the site. Once this is done, we will
discuss the resulting structure, and Nicole will run it by other
groups (e.g., Reference Committee, Instruction Committee) for feedback.
Because it has implications for some internal pages, this amounts
to a bigger change than we'd originally planned, but it does present
an opportunity to make some serious improvements to areas that have
been problematic in the past.
Nicole will also contact Steering Committee to determine when, and
how best, to get their input. In the meantime, Hecht Designs has
been apprised of the firm changes that grew out of usability testing,
and out of our own work. WAG will also need some time post-coding
to test and critique the new design.
2.
We plan to host a brown bag lunch to introduce staff to the new
design, and to brainstorm ideas for "tips," images,
and so on. Stephen will book an appropriate venue, and we'll
get a message out to the Libraries ASAP.
3.
WAG reviewed the "Best practices for web interfaces of searchable
databases" document drafted by Nicole and Christine. It's
based on our research and our experience with usability testing.
We believe it will be very useful to the Libraries for evaluating
out-of-the-box products, and for designing our own interfaces.
We hope to get a publication out of it, and we will solicit feedback
from various members of the staff.
Next
meeting:
Thursday,
May 13, 3-4:30pm, Barker Conference Room
http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/minutes/20040505.html
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