Aaron Schmidt has debuted a new column in Library Journal called “The User Experience.”
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6713142.html
The opening is wonderful:
The importance of user experience (UX) dawned on me one day when a patron asked to use the stapler kept in a drawer behind the reference desk.
It wasn’t the first time anyone had asked to use the stapler—it wasn’t even the first time that day. Considering it a bit more, I realized that it happened all of the time. Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine what the stapler was doing in the drawer in the first place. I liberated the stapler from its usual spot and placed it within easy reach of both the librarian on duty and the patrons approaching the desk. Though this was a small gesture, it altered the design of the library to provide a better experience for its users and relieved librarians of having to reach repeatedly into the drawer.
Where is your stapler at your library? Or that three hole punch? What else could you liberate and offer to your users so they might stick around longer and use the library more? Could you even imagine a library where folks missing the user-centered focus might want to keep such things under lock and key to dissuade use?
I’m excited to follow along with Aaron and his thinking in future columns.
[...] I expect that a new development will be more significant in spreading the word about UX to the library community, and I hope that my recent American Libraries article about user experience (”From Gatekeepers to Gateopeners“) has contributed to that process as well. Library Journal, one of our profession’s mainstream practitioner publications, has introduced a new column dedicated to user experience called “The User Experience” (you can’t get much more direct than that). I was also pleased to see that LJ has chosen Aaron Schmidt to write this column. I had the pleasure of working with Aaron a few years ago on a Soaring to Excellence program about web 2.0 for libraries. Aaron is well recognized in the library profession as one of our more innovative thinkers about how to better serve the library user community through improved usability and design. I’m sure he’ll do a great job with the column, and I’ll look forward to reading future entries – and I encourage you to read it as well. And it didn’t take long for another well-know blogger, Michael Stephens, to spread the word about Aaron’s new LJ column on UX via his widely read Tam…. [...]
Our stapler was the headphones. With 20 computers it was just crazy to hand out headphones on an individual basis, 2 years ago we put one set on every computer, wow…in 2 years we’ve replaced 5 due to lost and 5 due to wear/damage. So much easier to just risk $6 headphones, then make the student come get them and hand them out.
[...] Via TameTheWeb Don’t Miss “The User Experience” [...]