Riverton: Introduction
The website for the Riverton, New Jersey, School Library is a completely new site to replace a previous site housed at Follett that was very high on cognitive load and not designed with mobile in mind. The librarian had previously chosen WiX as the platform for the new site. A study of the site's users and information has yielded a completely new information architecture, design, and experience.
This website was designed and implemented from December 2017 - January 2018.
The original home page was difficult for users to cognitively manage, did not address the needs of all personas, and was not attractive. The Riverton librarian and I agreed to call the old page "The 1000 Links".
Before and After
Before: Below the fold, there are another page of similar links. Note how Kindergarten and 6th/7th-grade links are not ordered with other grades.
After (partial)
Other problems identified
Access to other parts of the website was not intuitive, given navigation on left and top-right not found on the home page, discouraging accessing to at least one very useful section.
The "Catalog" page is really a “Search” page. The search has somewhat arbitrary icon buttons and more controls than needed for the 80% case, with the narrowing controls at the bottom exposed by default. The basic search function exists on a legacy version of the library management software, with links to updated versions available on the left. Either Destiny Quest or Destiny Discover are likely better places for people to start, and it is not clear that Destiny Discover is the ideal place to go. The other links are not intuitively useful to most users. Coincident with launching the website to her patrons, back office changes to the library management system will direct users to Destiny Discover.
“Catalog” page
The librarian also realized during discussions that there were sites that were not part of Follett that she wanted people to be able to access. These ended up in the final design.
Finally, the Home and Catalog pages of the Follett site appear on mobile with tiny text and interactive elements, as any site without mobile support appears in a browser.
NOTE: the Riverton experience does not yet go beyond the site into social media.
Business Goals
Better utilization of the library website
Better utilization of library resources
More emotional connection between students, staff, and the library/librarian
Increased engagement of parents with library
Online presence/professional calling card/advocacy - librarians do cool things and every school really needs one!
Cataloging the librarian's professional development presentations
Reasonable access from mobile devices
The librarian can perform 95% of all future updates to content (impacts the design by limiting the ability to use certain flows that required code and that could not be updated easily with the default editor)
