Customer Analysis for the UT Austin Law Library Rare Books & Special Collections Website 9/20/2004
The Rare Books & Special Collections at the University of Texas at Austin Law Library documents the unique history of Texas and the United States law through rare and valuable documents, including over 100 dictionaries. Housed at the Joseph D. Jamail Center For Legal Research, its mission is
“to promote access to these resources by preserving them in a safe and secure environment, helping researchers locate and use them, and promoting their use through exhibit tours, publications and other outreach activities.
Through monetary donations and gifts from personal libraries, the UT Austin Law Library has been able to develop an impressive collection of Spanish, Mexican, Roman, Scottish, French, canon, and international law.
In an effort to teach the general public and more importantly, to inform potential donors of its growing collection, the library needs to develop a stronger, more impressive Internet presence. Currently, the website exists as one long, annotated bibliography, divided by different national laws and organized alphabetically by last name. The following Customer Analysis defines the anticipated audience for the Rare Books & Special Collections Law Dictionary Web site. In this paper, we describe our patrons, define the type of website we are building, establish a process for building the website, and determine our own set of guidelines to make this project a reality. In the end, we hope to understand the motivation for our customers to visit this website and to gain insight into their tasks, the technologies they use, and their social or organizational issues.
Defining Our Audience
The first step in our customer analysis is to define our audience. In our initial meeting with Mike Widener, Head of Special Collections, we discovered that his target audience is potential donors to the Rare Books & Special Collections. In essence, the site is primarily a way for the library to highlight the impressive collection it has acquired throughout the years.
At our initial group meeting, we established the need to gather information on existing and past donors of the Rare Books & Special Collections so that we can contact them for input on the new website. This list must be approved by Widener, as he will need to eliminate donors who may not be able or willing to participate in our study and prototype tests.
We also expect our donors and patrons to have standard technical capabilities (help me out here).
Here’s some notes on the audience:
- Understand your audience’s technical capabilities. Platform to connectivity speed, type of programming language to plug-ins. In Affinity’s case this has been determined to be cheap, robust, scaleable and useable hosting solutions. The MyDot initiative is the most recent addition to this.
Once we understand our audience, we will define the new web site for the Rare Books & Special Collections. The following four user profiles and scenarios help illustrate the type of user we anticipate will visit the site, as well as their expected thought process for maneuvering throughout the site.
User profile and scenario 1: Jason is a Doctoral student at the University of California at Berkley. He is working on his dissertation, a history of saints. Jason is now looking up information on Sir Thomas More who was beautified in 1836 and canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church in 1935. From his research, Jason has learned that most of the intriguing information comes from personal memoirs of people who personally knew the subject. He also knows that one of More’s sisters, Elizabeth, married the prominent lawyer, John Rastell. Jason is now trying to locate works by Rastell in the hopes of finding some commentary on More and to better understand English law during that time period.
User profile and scenario 2: Cynthia is an investment broker looking to donate $12,000 from an investment portfolio with her soon to be ex-husband. He is a graduate from Texas A&M Agriculture and Life Science, and knowing how much he dislikes UT Austin, she figures she can donate the money to his rival school. She can split the money evenly between them but since this is turning into a nasty divorce, she would rather make him angry. She loves books and is a history buff, so she wants her donation to go to preserving historical documents.
User profile and scenario 3: Craig just won his largest lawsuit. While studying at UT Austin, he often fell asleep in the library and learned to love the place. He would like to give back to the library, and with a tax write-off, is more than willing to donate $20,000. He is visiting the law library website, hoping to find a worthy cause. Although he doesn’t like flashy stuff, he also feels that a website reflects a company’s level of professionalism and integrity.
User profile and scenario 4:
(I will work on this some more this evening—I just wanted you to see where I’m at and to add any input).
- Think about how you want your audience to respond to your online presense: Perception/Tone/Guidelines – How do you want your target audience to respond to your online presence? What does the target audience currently think and feel about the company and your web site? What needs to be changed?
- Create a Targeted Communication Strategy. How will you convince them?
- Conduct usability testing to identify specific redesign issues rather than speculate.
- Become an Expert in your Field. Analyze your competition-- compare features and services, see what works and what doesn’t. Understand how your site differentiates itself from the competition.
3. Define our process
- How are you going to define and build your Web site?
Design process can be viewed in 4 parts:
Information architecture -> Interaction design -> Visual design -> Editorial voice
IA should be determined early and written in stone. Most projects start at ID. Only new systems have significant IA elements.
4. Define our own set of guidelines
1. Overall guiding principle: Don’t Make Me Think! --Steve Krug. You have seconds to capture a user’s attention, as they are speeding by at 60 miles per hour. Web sites should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.
2. Follow conventions – Create a reassuring sense of familiarity. Learn from other’s mistakes; Innovate only when you know you have a better idea.
3. Focus design on the novice user – All web users are novice all the time. Zero learning time or die.
4. Good design fills a need – All web users are unique, and all web use is basically idiosyncratic. Good design takes this into account … Good design is NOT a matter of what people like.
5. Design for scanning, not reading. Faced with the fact that you have little time to capture the user’s attention, you want them to see and understand as much as possible.
6. Design for the future – Design for extensibility; Create open navigation systems, create a consistent visual language; Write for the web.
7. Smart design does not detract from the user – It servers the user’s environment and capabilities; Functional and fast loading.
8. Maximize Feedback – Send information back to the user about what action has actually been done. Feedback should be fast and accurate. Usable/download times has a significant impact.
9. Maximize Affordances – When simple things needs pictures, labels, or explanations, the design has failed. Affordances are: “…the perceived and actual properties of [a thing], primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used.” -- Donald A. Norman
10. Test it! Allows team members to explore the best possible solutions and prove and disprove concepts; Do NOT believe what people say they do. Watch users as they perform tasks.
Summing it up!
Created by the Information Architecture Team: UT Law Library