2019-01-18 Design team meeting

Owned by Cynthia Schwarz (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 02, 2020
3 min read

Date

Jan 18, 2019

Participants

  • @Cynthia Schwarz (Unlicensed)

  • @Jackie Sipes

  • @Rachel Cox (Unlicensed)

  • @Gabe Galson

  • @Chris Doyle

  • @David Lacy

Goals

  • Contact

    • Primary contact: review the “Contact” page that Rachel has mocked up.

  • SCRC contact form

  • Chat box - I like what Harvard has

  • Top Navigation - Questions to ponder:

    • Should the navigation links be drop-downs or single links

    • color of the links? Black or red?

    • How do we want to handle the “Chat” link? Should this be a pop-up or go to a separate page?

    • Are “research” and “services” still the best items to have in the primary navigation?

    • On non-homepages, should we make the search box less prominent? If so, how would we do this? Just create a search icon that people can search

Discussion topics

Notes

Notes

Contact page

  • the group generally liked the “Contact” page that Rachel mocked up.

  • Next step is to review with Kristina DeVoe and Sarah Araujo, both of whom spend a lot of time curating the FAQs in LibAnswers

  • General question: do we need to have FAQs if this content is also included in the content on our web pages and the web page content is searchable?

    • In the web content style guide, there is a very clear explanation of what belongs in LibAnswers as an FAQ and what belongs in website content - perhaps we need to review this

  • After further discussion, we are going to remove the second search specifically for FAQs since FAQs can be searched through Library Search. There is also a link to “See all FAQs” that goes to LibAnswers which has its own search box

Location of search box on secondary/entity pages

  • we discussed the location of the search box and size of the header on all non-homepage pages.

    • Harvard has a magnifying glass icon on its secondary pages that opens the search bar when clicked.

    • Other libraries have the search box smaller and to the top right of the header

  • Jackie is going to work with the UX group to find examples of all three and test which is easiest for patrons to navigate

Second search box vs. changing homepage search

  • we had a lengthy discussion on the presence of multiple search boxes on a page vs. being able to modify the search box based on which page you were on.

  • Pros for modified search box based on page:

    • customization at the page level for what is being searched - i.e. limit to specific library location or collection

  • Pros for unified main search and second search on select pages:

    • streamlined user experience in the expectation of functionality for primary search box - it always goes to the same place no matter what page you’re on

    • easier to implement from a technical infrastructure standpoint

  • Conclusion: we’re going with the second search box - but it will only appear on the mini homepages.

 

Action items

@Jackie Sipes is going to set up a meeting with Kristina and Sarah A. to get feedback on the Contact page that Rachel designed. @Rachel Cox (Unlicensed) and @Cynthia Schwarz (Unlicensed) should also be included in this meeting
The team should review the web content style guide for the distinction between
@Jackie Sipes is going to work with the UX group to test the location of the search box on non-homepages

Decisions

  1. Implement a second search box on mini homepages for a pre-faceted search of library search or to search a specific resource, such as PubMed or blogs, etc. The alternative was to customize the search box depending on what page you were on.
  2. Remove the second search box from the “Contact us” page.