Presentation for online NetIKX Seminar (22 July 2020) https://www.netikx.org/

1. Time critical
user centred
library web design
@AntonyGroves

3. Kellie Mote and Mark Ayton ‘Strategic approaches to implementing accessibility’
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lVDVvIw4dmv5eCQEQvElHn9gofNfTcw9/view

4. Proactively
working towards
the Government
deadline of 23RD
September to
make our website
accessible
Reactively
working to make
our website and
services as useful
as possible
following closure
on 20th March

5. Accessibility
Usability

6. 2019 saw over a
million visits to the
Library website;
6,170 on busiest day
(Tuesday 14th May).

7. Government Design Principles
• This is for everyone
• Start with user needs
• Design with data
• Build digital services, not websites - A service is something that
helps people to do something. Our job is to uncover user needs, and
build the service that meets those needs. Of course much of that
will be pages on the web, but we’re not here to build websites.
• Iterate. Then iterate again
www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles

8. Start with user needs
•Spoke to academic community and gathered feedback
•Over 100 pieces of feedback collected and grouped
into four main themes: architecture, behaviour,
content and labelling
•‘Top Tasks’ identified (e.g. searching for and finding
books, booking rooms, accessing account)
https://alistapart.com/article/what-really-matters-focusing-on-top-tasks/

9. • Architecture:
“Confusing having two types of navigation”
• Behaviour:
“Have never used Library Search tabs”
• Content:
“More photos of the Library and more infographics”
• Labelling:
“Skills Hub should have a description mentioning academic skills”

10. Design with data
•Benchmarked with other institutions
•Looked at analytics - most/least viewed pages,
along with bounce and exit rates
•Ran ‘card sorts’ to determine site structure
•Created user stories to help edit pages

12. User stories
17,892 views of this page (and
subpages in Autumn term 2019).
This page had a bounce rate of
8.43% and an exit rate of 2.12%
(similar to ‘Study rooms’ page).
The ‘Find a book in the Library’
page had 6,785 views compared
with 1,182 in the 2018 Autumn
term when it was located in the
‘Using the Library’ section.
Views of Library News page (now
in the new ‘News, events and
workshops’ section) risen from
222 views to 1,154 over Autumn
term.
The new ‘Making your research
available’ section has very low
bounce and exit rates, and these
have also dropped across the
whole site, indicating that people
are finding what they expect to.

13. Iterate. And iterate again
•There is still much to unpack and much to improve
(and these should be ongoing pieces of work).
•UX Group currently organising user testing.
•Analysing usage to see which parts of the website
are seeing fewer views and less engagement.
•Working with teams inside and outside of the
Library to make our digital services as useful as
they can be to our community.

15. Pivot Add Hide

16. Pivot

18. Add

20. Hide

22. Recognition

23. Revisiting Ranganathan:
Applying the Five Laws
of Library Science to
Inclusive Web Design
Ten changes we’ve made
to the Library website
since lockdown
www.mmitblog.wordpress.com
Questions?

24. Usability
1. Think about some of the primary users/stakeholders of your service. From what you know about those
users, what are they likely to be trying to achieve? Will this have changed in the past three months?
2. Write a user-story for that user i.e.
As a…
I would like…
So that I can…
3. What do you think would be a top task for this user? Visit a page or service that you think they would use.
How successful is it in helping them to fulfil their user story?
Accessibility
Part of the Government’s basic accessibility check will involve assessing your homepage, which is likely to be
your most viewed page.
4. Enter the URL of you homepage into the Wave Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. In particular look for any
‘errors’ or ‘alerts’ that are highlighted. You do not need to share with the group (but should with your
institution). You can use the tool to look for missing alt-text, headers and more: it’s an invaluable resource.
5. Does your website have an accessibility statement? Can you find it easily and have you read it? How does
it compare to the Governments sample accessibility statement?
Exercises