User Experience (UX)

User Experience (UX)

The January 2010 Library Journal had an article by Aaron Schmidt titled “The User Experience.” His focus was on user experience design. He included three aspects of design: interaction design, information architecture, and visual design. Visual design” deals with the surface characteristics of an object or document.” This is the color of the carpet or the shape and layout of the circulation desk. Interaction design is the “process of creating how something behaves and how people must behave to engage it.” Think workflow, how people navigate through your library when you think about interaction design. Information architecture (IA) is about “organizing and structuring data.” In libraries this is often used in designing web page layouts and how they are labeled.

Whether we know it or not, we are the designers of our library services and use all three of these aspects in the work we do every day. How well are we doing? Not sure just what this all means? A series of articles on User Experience are planned for Library Journal. The first two are online at the links below. Want to read more about design? A list of books accompanies the first article.

January Library Journal Article

March Library Journal Article

Criticas

LJ, Library Journal and SLJ, School Library Journal have announced that Criticas book reviews have resumed online. To find them go to www.libraryjournal.com/criticas for the latest coverage. They also have an e-alert you can sign up for.

Criticas reviews adult and children’s Spanish-language titles. When the print edition was stopped, readers asked for these reviews and LJ and SLJ have listened.

Professional Media

As a director of a library system, I rarely read reviews of general fiction or non-fiction for adults or children. We don’t buy in those areas. However, I always look at the reviews of under the professional literature or media heading.

In looking at the September 1, 2009 issue of Library Journal I noticed that the reviews of Professional Media and now “Web-Only.” Just go to www.libraryjournal.com and look under Reviews/professional Media.

I took a look and the reviews are there just as they were in print. I looking at the ones for Aug. 15 there was a book titled Searching 2.0 by Michael Sauers. The only reason I mention this is that I have been in Plinkit committee meetings with Michael and did not know he was writing a book.

Oh the small world of librarianship.