2018-08-09 Design core team

Owned by Gabe Galson
Last updated: Aug 10, 2018 by Cynthia Schwarz (Unlicensed)

Date

Attendees

Goals

  • Determine layout and contents of bottom half of page, specifically the 'Events', 'Collections', and 'News Items' sections

Notes

  1. Search interface (last week’s work)
    1. Recap
    2. Show latest wireframe
    3. Already-implemented examples of latest wireframe’s layout:
      1. https://library.ucf.edu/
      2. https://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/
    4. Overall look?
      1. We’ll delay a discussion of this until the elements have been determined
    5. Any further discussion necessary?
      1. Not at this time
  1. This week’s topic
    1. Events, collections and news items areas- topics to discuss:
      1. How to harmonize with the search interface?
      2. What to pull from Rachel’s previous designs?
      3. Highlighted resources area to replace quicklinks?
    2. ‘Collections’ area
      1. We still want to retain this, but should think carefully about which collections make the grade… we need to logically determine what belongs here, and justify our decisions
      2. There’s a semantic issue w/ ‘collections’... maybe think of a better way to describe this to end users/library ppl
      3. The only ‘collections’ everyone can agree on are Blockson and digital collections (ContentDM)
      4. Everyone agrees that there’s value in retaining space within which to feature library resources hosted in external repositories like contentdm or dspace.  However these links could be folded into the ‘library locations’ area and the ‘featured’ area.
    3. List of library locations
      1. ACTION:  Replace law with ambler in the library locations section
    4. Idea:  Big footer containing everything we don’t want cluttering the main page/subpages
      1. Could be a place to put quick links, links to entity types & building locations
      2. Could be customized per subpage w/ quicklinks content
      3. A place for collections?
    5. Idea: Putting links to digital collections under the main search bar.  Jackie: the phrase ‘digital collections’ makes this confusing, as it’s incredibly vague.  
    6. Removing chat from the main page…  would this be too controversial? Jackie: a link on the homepage to ref chat is extremely standard industry practice
    7. ACTION: Remove the ‘collections’ area, add ‘digital collections’ link under search bar, add Blockson to the library locations list (with Ambler, SCRC, etc.)
    8. Open Questions raised during meeting
      1. Should our page be long and comprehensive like Harvard or Stanfords? Or should it be more compact?  The group seemed to lean towards the Harvard/Stanford approach, which produces a website that's both visually uncrowded and comprehensive.  However no decision was made.  

Wireframe Action items:

Replace Law with Ambler in the library locations section

Remove the ‘collections’ area, add ‘digital collections’ link under search bar (if desired), add Blockson to the library locations list (with Ambler, SCRC, etc.)