Usability Design
Topline Review:
Acceptable
The site is useable but could use improvement to make it more efficiently and effectively so.
Website as accessed:
April 1 - 16, 2011
http://www.clarke.public.lib.ga.us/index.html
Reviewed By:
Joanna June
Is it useable? Yes. Is it efficiently so? No. There is great interconnectivity to graphic design, information design and functional design to the overall usability design of the site. Just as it is important to have an informational structure, so too is it important to have a usability structure -- and this is the area in which the site can most improve. As it stands now, the site is useable. As an average user, one can find the information and resources that one is looking for and do the things that one wants to do on the site. According to good usability design, however, as eloquently stated by UsabilityFirst.com, constant focus should be on “understanding of what your users intent to use your website to accomplish” and design should follow from that. While some information gathering from the citizens of Athens-Clarke as to how and why they use the website would be worthwhile before a complete redesign is undertaken, there are a few areas where (with “intent to accomplish” top of mind) it can be reasonably inferred that immediate changes could be beneficial.
A Kindler Gentler Website
What is the difference between “ALRS Home” and “Athens-Clarke Co., HQ”? A typical user is probably not going to know and will be frustrated by the fact that (the former) Home page is different than the Index page (the latter). The HQ page is also the one linked from most search engines. One or the other should be the primary landing place of the website and that convention of “home” should remain constant.
The home page for each location should be re-centered and de-cluttered so that the things that most users would go to the website for (hours, directions, PINES book search and renewal, current events) are front and center. Another very easy change would be to make the ALRS logo a link to the home page (a pretty standard internet convention) as well as sorting out which site is the true home page as mentioned above. Moreover, links to external sites should open in new tabs or windows in the users’ browser - another fairly standard convention - so that it is clear that the user is leaving the Library System and going to an outside resource (and it is easier to go back).
