So it was with some delight that I stumbled upon Favthumbs. Do the internets really need another del.icio.us visualization tool? Maybe not, but it turns out that this one works for me. Since most of the stuff I’m doing these days is design-based, and being a generally visual person, images tend to imprint themselves on my brain better than words. If I bookmarked your website last week because you’ve done some interesting stuff with search boxes, I can guarantee you that I won’t remember the name of your site or anything I read on your page (rendering a search of my bookmarks fruitless), but I’ll probably remember the colours and layout. So a carousel (à la iTunes) or grid display of my del.icio.us bookmarks, complete with thumbnails, is genius. It’s pretty much exactly what the visually-biased like me need.

On “scent”

• We often start with an hypothesis: people who have a lot of experience using the web will be able to find things easier. The fact? That’s not the case. At UIE, they’ve done a lot of research on why users tend to generally succeed with some sites and they’ve identified patterns (which is what the session is all about).
• The notion of “scent” is all about links that suck users in and get them to the content they’re looking for . It all happens through “trigger words”. Our users come to our websites looking for something (their “trigger words”), so if they can’t find their trigger words, they are immediately disoriented.
• The 3-clicks-to-content notion is something of a fallacy — as long as each click makes the user feel like they are getting closer to the content they need, they generally don’t care how many clicks it takes to get there. As users drill through your site, if the next click takes them to a general page, they lose the scent and they are disoriented.
• Users tend to resort to using your site’s search feature when there is not enough scent. Using the site search is the user trying to create his/her own scent.
• This is not so much the case with sites like amazon (or our OPACs), but generally true for web content.
• Another fallacy: “above the fold”. Users have no problem scrolling. The one thing to keep in mind is the “iceberg syndrome” — i.e. when users believe that everything above the fold is a representation of what’s below the fold.
• You can’t measure the scent of a page, but you can find out how confident your users are as they’re clicking through the site (with some user testing). When scent works, users are more confident.

On trigger words

• When they can’t find their trigger words, users will use the site search. The tend to type in the trigger words they were looking for in the first place, so check your site’s search logs for what those trigger words are.
• If they ask questions (desk, email, im), check what terms they are using. Those are their trigger words.

On scent blockers

• Navigation panels where labels are not easily understandable
• Navigation panels with labels that are not mutually exclusive
• Jargon (hello, “databases”, “indexes”, etc.)

On links

• The stronger the link, the better it will suck users in.
• The best links have 7-12 words in them (wow!). With 7-12 words, users get more information and therefore have more confidence.
• More than 12 words might be too “noisy”, i.e. too many words masking the trigger word(s).
• “Cute” links lose scent (keep it real, yo).
• Don’t incorporate branding into the link because users need to see their trigger words.

On navigation

• Have to use short links by necessity
• Use categories that are clear and mutually exclusive
• Make sure your subcategories give off scent about main categories (i.e. if users can see subcategories, e.g. drop-downs, it will orient them on what the main category is about).

On page length

• Short pages reduce scent.
• Longer pages include more content and that’s not a bad thing — users generally don’t mind scrolling.
• Horizontal rules are a deal-breaker — users tend to stop scrolling because they think it’s the end of the page.

On designing your website

• The link “site map” doesn’t give off scent except to say “here’s where the scent is” - if a lot of people look at your site map (like they use your site search), it’s probably because they don’t get any scent from your home page.
• Websites don’t have “sections” as far as users are concerned. We think of them as sections (as web designers and content folks), but users don’t care about sections. They just want to find their content.
• Designing from a scent-based perspective is better than a navigation-based perspective. Start at the content page and ask: what are all the pages the user needs to be sucked in from? Don’t start at the home page, build your navigation, then build your content pages (not very scent-full!).

On testing for scent

• When watching users use your site, before they click ask how likely it is that they think they will find what they’re looking for by clicking on that link.
• After they click: either they get the stuff they’re looking for, or the scent gets stronger. Ask if this page gets them closer to what they’re looking for.
• You know they’ve run out of scent when they use the back button and/or site search.
• You can’t design a great site without testing — if you don’t watch your users use your site, it’s near impossible that your design will work for them.

This is the text of James Joyce’s Dubliners, which is one of my favourite texts (snagged from Project Gutenberg). It’s also my go-to for when I’m playing with text analysis tools (when am I playing with text analysis tools, you ask? There’s a post in the works on that very topic, stay tuned). Looking at this cloud makes me want to run home, brew up a pot of tea, settle into a comfy chair on the deck, and lose myself in these stories once again (as I’ve done roughly 12-ish times in the past).

In the spirit of meme-ifying this (thanks, Jason!), I’m tagging some work peeps: Shawn, Nick, John, Krista, and Karen.

Sorry to be so screenshot-y lately, but I couldn’t pass this one up. The above image is a tag cloud of my del.icio.us bookmarks generated by wordle. You should have heard the loud gasp that issued from my lips upon seeing this image. Why? Because IT IS MY LIFE represented in a tag cloud. Well, my life at the moment, at any rate. Here’s the what’s what on that:

• I’ve read that “to read” (or some variation thereof) is arguably everyone’s most frequently applied tag. As you can see from the image above, it’s definitely mine, and it always has been. This is particularly poignant at this very moment in my life because it feels like I’m not doing much more than wading in a pool of good intentions, gathering data and content that could potentially have some impact on me if only I had time to digest it all. You see, I’m one of those odd types that actually removes the “toread” tag once I’ve read something, so the fact that it is, by far, my most frequently applied tag drives home the point that I’m not reading enough. At the rate I’m going, I might never get through the “toread” backlog and that makes me disproportionately unhappy.
• Of course, one of the main reasons why I’m not getting to all that juicy, bookmarked content is because I’m teaching my LIS course again this term (”lis9763“). It’s the first time I’ve taught it during back-to-back terms and I’m starting to wonder if that was a good idea. In some ways it works well: I got into a groove balancing it all last term, and that’s continued nicely into this term. On the other hand, it’s a lot of work and requires me to drop a few other things from my plate (to wit “toread”; see also: dust bunnies running amok in my house). At any rate, the relative weighting of “lis9763″ in my tag cloud is spot-on.
• And then there’s that little project that is swallowing me whole at work: our website redesign (”redesign“). I’m in the thick of it at the moment, and when you’re in the thick of something so huge, with a deadline that looms (September!), you have to keep reminding yourself how much (a lot) and for how long (years) you’ve wanted to blow up the website and start over.  I can’t tell you how exciting it is to finally be doing the work (this is my favourite project ever), but boy howdy, it is all-consuming. Even more so than its relative size indicates in my tag cloud. “toread” will necessarily remain on hold for a few more months.

So, there it is, my life distilled into three tags. I am at once horrified (I’ve GOT to get our more), vindicated (so THAT’s where all my time is going!), and amused (O, tags! you never fail me!) by it.

Get your certificate here [via]. I’ve been using FF3 for all of 48 hours and I have nothing but good things to say about it. My top two extensions (del.icio.us and the web dev toolbar) are even better than they used to be. And that’s just for starters.

Also? I’ve got some honest-to-goodness blogging planned. Really.

| View | Upload your own

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the closing plenary at the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting last week. David Rothman, Melissa Rethlefsen, Bart Ragon and I presented on Web 2.0 tools and participated in a panel discussion (with Mark Funk, awesome MLA past president) after the formal presentations. It was a great time! I’ve given talks to smaller groups of medical/health librarians in the past, but being around so many of them at once just confirmed what I always sort of knew: medical librarians rock!

If you’re a member of MLA, the whole session was webcast and should be archived over at MLANET. Also, David’s got all four presentations up in one handy post. A hearty thanks to the MLA for having me and to the stellar session planners for making it all come together so seamlessly (and enjoyably)!

But enough of that. Here are my slides for this afternoon’s presentation, followed by a bunch of links (by way of a “handout”). The people here have been awesome, so I’m really looking forward to spending more quality time with them this afternoon, talking about libraries & social software!

Presentation Slides

| View | Upload your own

Presentation Links

Blogging libraries

• SJCPL Blog
• Williamsburg Regional Library
• Ann Arbor District Library
• Plymouth State University
• K-State Libraries

Libraries using wikis

• Albany County PL Staff Wiki
• SJCPL Subject Guides
• Ohio University Libraries Biz Wiki
• Case Wiki (not library-specific, but pretty cool)

Libraries using del.icio.us

• Buley Library
• Lupton Library, UTC
• Seldovia PL
• …more here

Libraries using online social networks

• MSU Libraries Digital Video Contest
• SMC Library
• AADL MySpace Branch
• Library Director @ Bennington
• McMaster LiveJournal Community (not a library example, but a good example of the conversations happening in these spaces!)

Libraries using Flickr & YouTube

• Library of Congress
• U of Michigan
• Duke Yearlook
• Georgia Tech Mechanical Engineering
• McCraken County PL

10 Things you can do with social software TOMORROW!

1. check out the blogging libraries wiki for ideas on what libraries are doing with blogs
2. start a blog at wordpress.com
3. display or syndicate your RSS feed on your home page (example)
4. open a Flickr account for your library (example)
5. start a del.icio.us account for your library (example)
6. use your del.icio.us links to generate a subject guide on your website (example)
7. use Twitter as an announcement tool (example)
8. find out what your users are saying online about you (and respond) (example)
9. create a presence in Facebook for your library (example)
10. Think about (and advocate for!) a Learning 2.0 program at your library (example)

“It seems like there are lot of different kinds of libraries: public libraries, school libraries, university libraries, college libraries, law libraries, medical libraries, corporate libraries, special libraries, private libraries. But really there’s just One Big Library, with branches all over the world.”

The One Big Library Unconference is a one-day gathering of librarians, technologists and other interested people, talking about the present and future of libraries.

I’m so there.

Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.

Original image here.

This is an image I used in a guest lecture at an LIS class last Fall. The point? Challenge the status quo; switch up your focus and make sure you look at things from a different angle. If you ever find yourself saying the words, “we’ve always done it this way”, that’s your queue to step back, take a deep breath, and change your focus. It’s something I try to impart to my LIS students, but when I was prepping for that guest lecture (which was for Reference class) last Fall, I realized that it’s an approach that really can be applied to any situation — whether it’s an interaction at a reference desk, a website redesign project, an LIS course, whatever.

Thanks for the tag, Michael! And while I’m not much of a meme-tagger myself, this time I’d love to hear from Jason Griffey, Jenica Rogers-Urbanek, Ryan Deschamps, Chad Boeninger, and Michael Porter. And anyone else who’d like to play, too!

Yes, this probably happens in the land of web 2.0 all the time, but here’s the rub: the Emerging Technologies Group at MPOW used Stikipad as our documentation wiki and I did that thing I always warn people not to do when using free online tools: I didn’t back things up. It looked like things were going downhill for them some time ago, but as it happens, I didn’t have need to check out old meeting minutes for months, and when I tried to access them recently, I was rudely confronted with a DNS error page. And, no, I didn’t receive a single heads-up message from them warning of their imminent closure.

So, the moral of the story? Back. Things. Up.

Updated later: thanks to David for pointing out that Stikipad seems to be back (if you’re still seeing the DNS error, give it a bit to propagate). Guess who’s moving her data?