snydman@stanford.edu's blog

Between January and March of this year the web redesign project took a small break in full-time engineering to focus attention on design work, bug fixing, user testing, and analyzing user feedback. The outcomes of this work have been positive, as we've learned a great deal from students, faculty and staff about how they would use the new site and whether or not it will help them successfully complete their most important tasks.  Many small and large improvements to librarypreview.stanford.edu have already been made, and continue to be added.

The new library website had a table at the Library Open House, at which we did some light-weight testing and previewed a live test site to visitors. It was a big success in that the table received approximately 50 visitors, 21 of which participated in the live test. The breakdown of testers included:

• 10 undergraduates
• 4 graduate/professional school
• 3 lecturers/instructors/visiting scholars
• 2 library staff
• 2 other SU staff

Testers were directed to a laptop and asked to perform 3 to 5 common website tasks.

We are excited to offer a preview of the emerging visual designs for the new library website. We have included a version of the home page and a sub-page (Ask Us) to give you a sense of the colors, font, layout and overall design aesthetic of the new site.

Keep in mind that these designs are in the early stages of development and -- importantly -- the text and labels in these designs are not by any means final.

A critical step in the development of a large complex website is the definition of the information architecture. The information architecture defines the structure, hierarchy and navigational pathways of a website, and the major categories of content.

As part of the Library Website Redesign project we have developed a sitemap to represent the new site's information architecture. The sitemap is based on extensive user testing and feedback, a detailed content analysis of the current SULAIR web environment, and a series of card-sorting exercises.

Website designers often use personas to insure the design will meet users' needs. "A persona is a character sketch that represents a particular segment of the target audience," according to Steve Mulder, author of The User is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web.

We are pleased to share the news that we have selected Chapter Three as a partner for the Library Website Redesign Project. Chapter Three is a "local" (San Francisco) company with Stanford experience, and a managing partner who is a librarian! They have a deep understanding of what we do.

The Library Website Project will include:

• Redesign of the Library Homepage,
• Improvements to our existing Drupal environment,
• Development of new templates and workflows for Subject Pages, Branch Pages, Administrative Pages, and Exhibit Pages
• Development of a plan and tools for migrating existing pages (DreamWeaver and Drupal) to the new environment
• Training on using the new tools and environments

Chapter 9 “The View from here” in Scholarship in the Digital Age, by Christine Borgman

https://giving.stanford.edu/get/layout/tsc/PresidentsMessage

The following outlines the current status, recent updates, priority tasks and project roadmap for the implementation of Drupal as a content management framework at SULAIR.

Current status and recent updates

• Development of Engineering, Biology, Art and Music branch library sites is ongoing. All sites are ready or near ready for first public roll-out.
• Design discussions and initial development of the Chemistry library site has begun.