Sfpl.org is the website to The San Francisco Public Library. The site acts as a visual and textual guide for users of the twenty-seven brick and motor branches of the San Francisco Public Library system. The site is an information repertory where users can obtain information such as obtaining a library card, locations of library branches and their hours of operation, a calendar of events, exhibits, and classes, and other resources and services. In addition, the site also acts as a virtual library from which users can borrow hundreds of thousands of eBooks, newspapers articles, eMusic, and videos. And as they could do with physical books, users of the site could also return and renew their electronic materials. And lastly, the site acts as a menu in informing users the resources the physical library branches have to offer and how the residents of San Francisco can go about accessing those resources.
A quick skim through the Sfpl.org immediately reveals that one of the interesting challenges the site designers of Sfpl.org had to deal with is the site’s very diverse and varied audiences. While most sites have a tightly targeted demographic, sfpl.org has numerous. It services all the residents of the metropolis of San Francisco (men, women, kids, people of different races, people of different nationalities–some of whom are not English speakers, students, homemakers, etc.). Because of its diverse audience and the numerous services it offers, the site is designed to be viewed in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and there are separate tabs for teens and kids. Additionally, there is an advanced search option for students to search for scholarly resources. Â
The purpose of this report is to judge the usability of sfpl.org, which means that it is judged primarily on how useful it is to its users—meaning how well it enables it users to navigate through it to achieve their goals. The criteria used to judge the usability of this site based on the usability heuristics by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville & Jorge Arango in their book Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond. In this book, the useful principle is defined as whether there is a need for something. The learnable principle is defined as how easy is it for a user to navigate through the site, learn its numerous sections, and to be able to use it more effectively and efficiently navigate through it because they have learned how to do so from  navigating through the site. The memorable principle judges whether the users remember what they learned and can effectively apply those memories whenever they reuse the site. Lastly, the delightful criteria is used to judge whether users enjoy using the site.  Finally the effectiveness and efficiency of the site will be examined. The effectiveness judges whether the site is doing the job what it was built to do. And the efficiency judges how fast–without the waste of resources such as time—users can achieve their purposes on the site.
As a website that services so many people, appearance does not seem to be the most important goal of the creators of sfpl.org, rather usability was their top goal. Sfpl.org is built for visibility and easy navigation. In terms of appearance, the site looks drab and old fashion.  The design of the website is in the colors of light shades of blues for the top row and side columns and accompany by a light background the body where a chunks of text is located. However this boring appearance seems to suit the site, because from it looks and feel of the appearance of the, the colors represent the San Francisco public library system. Therefore, visitor of the physical library who visit the site, will feel as if they are in the physical library. The site’s design connects the website to the physical libraries.
From the incredibly large amounts of information available on the site, it is easy to see that it acts a documentation for the whole of the San Francisco public library system. The purpose for the documentation is for the users to access the information they need. The site informs users of the San Francisco Public Libraries’ resources, activities and services that are available both online and at the physical branches and what they need to access them. In total, the site has seven menu tabs. These tabs are Home, Books & Materials, eLibrary, Services, Kids, Teens, Calender, Libraries, and About. The navigation structure of sfpl.org is organized with these tabs, as all the information is categorize under these tabs and their drop-down menus. Other than the Home, Kids, and Teen tabs, all the menu tabs, have an embed drop-down menu. In addition to the tabs, there is a search tool that is very useful since there is a lot of information on the site. The search tool allows the user to filter for specific information on the website without having to look through the whole site.
From looking at and navigating through the site, it is obvious that the sequence of the placement of tabs in the menu is deliberate. The first tab is the Home tab. The Home shows that the purpose of the designers of the website is to get its users to make the decision to visit one of the twenty-seven branches of the San Francisco library system. The home tab clearly shows the main purpose of the site is to get users to go to the physical libraries. It reveals that the site’s designers think that the primary purpose of the users of the site is to find information about the physical library branches. The home tabs display information such as upcoming events at different branches, the location and hours of the main library branch and all the other twenty-seven branches, services the library provides, and spring features which highlights what’s going on in the spring season. Next to the home tab is the Books and materials tab where users can conveniently browse through the library system’s catalogue to locate what they are seeking. Finally, the third tab is the eLibrary tab. Users navigate through this tab to obtain electronic materials such as ebooks, music, videos, and other electronic sources. The location of this tab illustrates that although electronic materials are increasingly becoming popular, they are not regarded to be as important as physical materials.
Overall, Sfpl.org is well designed and accomplishes its purpose. The only problems it seems to have is that it has a lot of information and it design is boring. However, it is easy to see why the website was design the way it is. Although, it looks old fashion, it is a design that is still relevant and useful to users of the site as it is easy to the eyes and making it easy to read the site’s information. With a little more effort it could made to look both stylish and usable, however, for now it is a safe deign. Another good decision the site’s designer made is the use of redundancy. Redundancy made the site very useful. Repeating much of the information throughout the site allows users to access the same information in different sections of the site. Information such as address, hours, language options, and the services the libraries provide can be found at several areas of the site including several tabs, links at the content section of the tabs, and at global areas of the site such as the footer and header of the website.
