About Our Website Redesign – Libraries Website Redesign

Goals

To create a more effective, efficient, engaging site that is consistent, easy to learn to use, enjoyable to use, and affords tolerance for errors when errors are made.
Bring our core services to the top, make them easier to find and use.
Create user-focused site that continues to enhance the user experience for our key audiences: faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers.
Create a design process that is iterative and more agile to meet the evolving needs of our users.
LibraryWeb is an official university and libraries' publication, and its design, navigation, and content will reflect the university and libraries' publication standards.
Incorporate our core team's skills and knowledge in identifying innovations and technologies that should be incorporated into our design, experiment with those, and incorporate them where appropriate and effective.
Identify and address programmatic and organizational strategic goals.
The Redesign will meet Section 508 criteria for basic accessibility requirements.

Scope & Priorities

New Information Architecture
New visual design throughout the site
New navigation, both global and local (more flexible)
Develop Agile process to allow for iterative design
Defining and addressing our user group(s)
Internal and external communications and feedback mechanisms
Incorporate user testing and user feedback as part of the ongoing iterative, agile development
Integrate look and feel across CUL/IS online systems

Key Design Principles

Make the site more usable for our patrons/users, particularly our faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers
Design for fluid/responsive screen size to effectively accommodate mobile and other devices (responsive design)
Simplify navigation, and use persistent and consistent navigation categories
Group "like" content together
Make search and access front and center (top task)
Create a welcoming affective design that is user-centered
Save the time of the user
Make the site as guessable as possible, and reduce the users' learning curve
Create a process that allows for an iterative and agile visual design, interaction design, and information architecture