Rethinking the Library Experience
September 5th, 2006
What images and feelings does the word “library” bring to mind? Quiet? Quaint? Confusing? Dusty? Old? Academic? Even if you love libraries, how easy is it really for an average person to find their way around?
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh recognized that it would take more than an aesthetic facelift to convey the welcoming experience exuded by user-friendly environs like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. Enlisting the help of Maya Design, they dared to walk in their users’ shoes and discovered insights that lead to a user-centered overhaul of the library’s organization:
People are generally in a hurry. “To remain relevant, libraries must get patrons in the door and in front of the materials they want quickly and easily.”
Library lingo makes users feel like strangers in a strange land, a land that cannot be navigated without an insider’s help. Libraries label things in jargon (”reference desk”) and use complicated numeric systems to organize resources (a la Dewey Decimals).
People look for the “Cookbooks” section, not the 600’s. This may not sound shocking, but when’s the last time you saw a library marked with strategically placed signs like those obvious ones used by their retail counterparts: “Cookbooks” and “Health & Fitness?”
The library experience should be consistent regardless of how it’s accessed, from the web to in person and from one section to another. “If users can interact with one small part of the library experience and predict how other parts work, it makes them feel powerful.”
For more food for thought on how library design affects user experience and to learn how Carnegie and other libraries have addressed these issues, check out…
Link: Library Journal: Transforming the Library Experience
Link: Maya Design’s Carnegie Library Case Study
Entry Filed under: Bad Places, Good Places, Methodology, Information Architecture
2 Comments Add your own
1. darren | August 18th, 2006 at 7:55 am
check out the seattle pubilc library by perhaps the greatest present day academic and architect rem koolhaas…he also teamed with bruce mau to work on the signage and overall environment design
2. Mickey McManus | September 5th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Thanks for the mention regarding this project. It was a fun and frustrating experience. We learned quite a bit and the librarians and leaders of the CLP have insights that many public institutions should grok.
For a not too bad NPR broadcast about this project you can go here (its about a little more than halfway through the program)…
http://www.smartcityradio.com/smartcityradio/past_shows.cfm?showsmartcityID=298&PageNum_getsmartshows=1
rant?
I noticed that one of your other commenters noted the seattle library… please someone do a user study of that one… xeroxed signs taped to the wall telling you how to get down using the back stairwell when you feel trapped and other signs printed from desktop publishing tools pointing to librarians… an apparent second thought… otherwise a nice piece of architecture for architects and graphic design for graphic designers.
If you want to make an impact with architects my sense is that they have to start learning about 2 things… information architecture (that middle layer between the raw “system” of the place and the user “interface(s)” represented by the physical/computational/human touchpoints… and maybe actually learning a bit of the humbling stuff that comes from watching users actually use a space to get to a goal.
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