TMI? Sweating the details IS how you get good user experience design. I am sometimes reminded of the Oscar Wilde quote:"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." If you replace "poem" with "site" and "comma" with ".button {text-transform: uppercase; }", then I considerthat a day well-spent :) Alex On 2014-10-02 22:04, Brad Coffield wrote: > So many responses to address! ah! > > The LITA support to this idea is lovely to see. Thank you very much. > > I agree that code4lib is awesome and that we could potentially create a > document which would gain traction in the wider community BUT I really do > think official support/integration is the best case scenario. > > > Shaun, http://guidelines.usability.gov/ is a neat site and I'll have to > explore it more, even just for myself. How does this differ from my vision > of what we're discussing (to say nothing of Josh's vision or anyone else's): > > 1. I think that it makes best sense as far as official > validation/circulation (and for ease of use by all librarian's regardless > of experience) to have a much abbreviated document listing best practices. > And works cited. And maybe an appendix with more information. A sort of > list that the group could agree upon that "Well, if a library does these > things they are well along the way to great usability." It wouldn't address > a lot of the nitty gritty details that guidelines.usability.gov does, for > example "13:9 Use Radio Buttons for Mutually Exclusive Selections." That is > an excellent point but TMI for the document I'm describing. > > 1a. This document would be succinct enough that managing it would be easy. > We need to have something easy to update or it risks becoming old and > useless. > > 1b. I really like the point made by Christina about not re-inventing the > wheel. And this is exactly where I'm coming from. Yes, there's a ton of > great UX stuff out on the web but what would be a great service to > libraryland would be for a group of knowledgeable librarians to come > together and do all that research work and present everyone with a > simplified 'wheel' for general use. > > 2. But I'm picturing a lot beyond this. Some sort of website (wiki, > whatever) where library people are able to pool knowledge and resources. > Best practices with libguides. Libguides customizations. I recently did a > complete makeover on our Illiad site - I could share info/steps on how I > did that, for example. People could share useful scripts etc. etc. > > The first document would primarily/exclusively be general web best > practices but the second thing - that would go beyond. > > Just my thinking. I'm game to help whatever ends up taking shape :) > >