I’ll admit this session was not what I was expecting! I went in thinking they’d point me to a bunch of tools for designing a usable website (something we don’t really have - well we do - but if you run it through Bobby we’d fail miserably - and our staff doesn’t even know every page we have - so how can our patrons?)
Okay, back on track - so this session was not actually about that - in fact I really only learned about one tool - affinity mapping - a very neat idea - but not something I’m going to be able to convince our patrons to participate in. Affinity mapping goes like this (if I undestand correctly)
- First you grab all of the links from your homepage (or that you think should be on your homepage)
- Second you put the titles of these links on individual pieces of paper (post-its, typed out and cut up - whatever)
- Next you sit down a group of people (patrons and/or staff) and you ask them to sort these labels into categories
- You tell the group that they don’t have to use every label
- You tell them that they are allowed to create new ones if they think they are necessary
- You have them mark their X favorite/most useful pages
- You let them loose and see what they come up with.
There are a few problems with this method - and I know this because we all had to get up and create our own affinity maps - yep, that’s right, and interactive session. Problem 1 - you tell the users that they don’t have to use all links - but they probably will. Problem 2 - you tell the users to add their own suggestions - they probably won’t.
For this reason you have to be careful what links you provide the user with - because that’s probably the link you’re going to end up with.
Overall it was a fun session and it can be a fun exercise - one I think I’ll do with my staff - but probably not my patrons.
