Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Portal Implementation Issues and Challenges (27 Oct 2004) User-centered design is an underlying principle for any library application, including portals. A sort of Copernican Revolution is becoming apparent in libraries. Now more than ever, libraries are no longer the center of the information universe. The focus has shifted to the user as the driving force behind library services, not the Platonic ideals of information organization. User-centered design is the manifestation of this shift. If your services are not user-centered, then your services will not be used. The key to creating successful, user-centered services is providing services users want and desire, not necessarily services librarians think they need. To learn what users want and desire conduct surveys, focus group interviews and usability studies. Ask and listen. Whether we believe it or not, users are much more information literate than we suspect. Make sincere efforts to implement services to meet users' desires. Ask yourself what tasks your users want to accomplish. Do they want to find a list of articles on a particular topic; read a particular journal article; renew a borrowed book? Implement those services. Make them easy to use without requiring bibliographic instruction sessions. Facilitate usability tests. If users can accomplish the tasks, then great. If not, then it is back to the drawing board. Article URL: http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-04/morgan.html Read 113 more articles from American Society for Information Science sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Portals in Libraries     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy