The Web Board welcomed Roger Black and Liz Danzico from Roger Black Studio to present and discuss the Design Brief.
The Web Board reviewed two layout concepts to the web redesign. The concepts are named Franklin and Dewey. Each design concept explores different aspects of the design brief.
a. The Franklin concept is considered more traditional and conservative. It follows more closely "Protoptype 1" drafted by the Information Architecture team. There is a lot of text and a lot of content on the site. It was built on the premise "what if we could curate at the top level some of the interesting things the library is doing?"
b. The Dewey concept is a bit more modern, digital, and "webby". There were two versions of the Dewey concept, named Dewey 1 and Dewey 2. Dewey 1 is similar to Dewey 2 except that the search tab headings in Dewey 1 are at the bottom while in Dewey 2 they are at the top. The Dewey concept follows more closely "Protoptype 2" drafted by the Information Architecture team. The page is divided into mostly equal sections with a simple, less complicated layout and a large box containing the search tabs.
It was noted that while the Franklin layout featured the "Ask A Librarian" box, the Dewey layout was missing this. The Web Board stressed the importance of including an "Ask A Librarian" element into the final design layout due to its popularity and use.
Gwizdka supplied a gaze plot analysis of the two concepts. A "gaze plot" shows us the sequence in which users look at various elements on a page and identifies what users see on a web page and in what order. According to the analysis, the search box section was a major point of concentration for both concepts; however, the Franklin concept featured more "hits" outside the search box due to its inclusion of more images within the page. If we believe in efficiency and that the Search tab box is the most important resource on the homepage, the gaze plot analysis reveals that Dewey 2 is most desirable.
Boyle asked Roger Black to insure that the design addresses use by the visually impaired
Danzico spoke to the issues of searching. She presented a concept of a more simplistic search with only the catalog and site search integrated into one search box. Sterback explained the concepts that went into the search box prototypes. Several ideas were given including segmenting the search into an advanced search page with several search boxes and reducing the options given in the current prototypes to provide a more intuitive interface. The Web Board agreed that more work needs to be accomplished in consolidating the search prototype to be as easy to use as possible without losing its complexity. The Search Team will meet and report in the next meeting regarding its outcomes. Danzico also requested samples of search queries from the Library Catalog as well as the site search. These will be provided by Chris (for the Library Catalog) and Yuhwei (for the site search).
The Web Board should continue to review the Dewey and Franklin concepts and send comments and suggestions to Black and Danzico. Members were also encouraged to identify other pages they would like to see conceptualized. Once the review is done the Web Board will decide which concept most ably captures the direction that Roger Black Studio will take in implementing a prototype design.
Normal agenda items such as approval of minutes and normal team updates will be done off-line.