Our Instructional Design Intern, Winter, has been working on improving and updating our library research guides to make them more engaging and user friendly. Here are some of his reflections in response to the central question…
Can we (re)design a LibGuide that’s fun and easy to use?
I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. I’ve been asking my colleagues this question a lot lately. Heck, I’ve even been asking my friends this question a lot lately –most aren’t aware of the existence of LibGuides. Which is actually, in my opinion, the best sort of feedback –pure, unbiased, and with a beginners mind.
We developed a framework for testing how to improve our LibGuides. The three areas we’re interested in exploring are as follows:
- Navigational layout
- Number of links per page
- Multimedia vs. Text based content
Exciting stuff, I know! But sarcasm aside, let’s return to the “special sauce” in the original question, “fun and easy to use”. Sure, most people don’t spend much time in LibGuides, and let’s be honest, they aren’t the most interesting thing to look at. But, somewhere in there is an important opportunity. We have the capacity to create a new model for learning that caters to the habits and preferences of new learners in an increasingly visual world.
Before we set off on our experiment to identify how students prefer to learn, we did some preliminary research of the best practices that have been developed in current LibGuides at other university libraries. Across the board, information scholars have pointed towards less is more. Shorter tab and subject headings, less links, smaller paragraphs –these were the prevailing rules for communicating content. In addition, using multimedia was encouraged when visualizing items in a collection, such as book covers or even the logos of journals and databases. What this is reinforcing, is a stronger lean towards visual navigation.
Our experiment will focus on the effectiveness of a visual treatment of our LibGuides. We want to discover whether or not students respond better to text or multimedia, and furthermore, if our visual treatment can increase engagement and usability.
