TIS Lab

The Fine Arts Library Redesign is now complete and moved to production. Many new improvements have been made to the information architecture, design and content integration to improve user interaction and reduce maintenance efforts.

Information architecture improvements include a new site layout which chunks content together logically and allows for easier lateral navigation. A horizontal navigation was created to classify main sections. We are now using active states to highlight the main and subsections a user visits, thus providing context and wayfinding clues. The redesigned home page spotlights new applications we’ve recently developed and allows for more continuity with the main Libraries home page.

New Site

Old Site

A new design was created to integrate within the Libraries approved secondary template. This design includes a new secondary header throughout the FAL site so the user easily recognizes what branch they are in. The header includes a new logo providing the full branch name and acronym and includes rotating images of faculty and students using the library. Colors for the new design where drawn from the interior colors used in the branch. To separate the main content from the surrounding site a new treatment was designed to visually raise the main content and to separate the horizontal navigation by providing a distinct look for easy recognition.

Content integration and reduced maintenance has been improved by integrating Recent Arrivals, FAL News, Staff Picks and Hours. All four reduce bloat by including only recent content and reduce maintenance by integrating content from the Catalog, Blog, or a central application. Staff picks can be submitted through the Catalog and programming was provided to cache and display these picks within the branch site. FAL News is managed through a blog, cached and displayed in a news page and on the branch home page. Hours is also displayed in the branch site but maintained in a central application.

TIS would like to thank the Fine Arts Library Staff and the Library Systems for their important collaboration and for ensuring the completion of this project before the set deadline.

Spurred by the realization that our home page lacked a clear starting point, and that patrons are confused about their various search options, the Libraries recently decided to implement a tabbed search box.  We wanted it to be prominent, simple, and intuitive. 

A working group was formed to determine what tabs and sub-choices we should include as well as to make recommendations on functionality and aesthetics. 

After taking inventory of our searchable services and reviewing other academic libraries, we fielded an online survey to get feedback from our staff and patrons on what tabs to include, what they should be labeled, etc.  View a PDF of the results or see them online. The second link includes the ability to read open comments we received.

We created a working prototype and tested it with users which lead us to make some structural and graphical changes.  See the first round of testing’s script and results summary, which mainly showed us that the search box needed to be more prominent in the overall design.  In the second round of testing (script &  results summary), users had a 94% success rate overall and completed most tasks in a straightforward manner using our new LIBsearch box.  Feel free to contact me, Jade Anderson, directly if you’d like more detail on the testing methodology or results.

We went back and forth a bit about branding it–users had varying opinions on the matter–but we did end up branding it LIBsearch in the end.  The tabbed search box that we are pushing live in a few days will be monitored closely and is subject to alterations based on feedback and analysis of use. 

In current times where technologies evolve at a lightening pace and we strive to provide usable and relevant web services to our patrons, we are more interested than ever in your ideas and feedback.  Let us know what you think of our newly redesigned search by commenting, filling out an anonymous one-question survey, or emailing lib-searchbox at utlists dot utexas dot edu.

TIS is proud to have our work featured in a three part series from News8 Austin.  The U.S. Latino & Latina World War II Oral History Project, created by UT Professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, has been making an impact since it went live several months ago.

Professor Rivas-Rodriguez brought her work and the website into the national headlines when Ken Burns’ documentary on PBS, “The War”, added Latino veterans to the program (after not including them in the original cut of the documentary).

The website has an extensive searchable database of transcripts and videos of interviews with these WW2 veterans.  Also featured are hundreds of photographs, both then and now, of these heroic individuals.

Not only does this body of work from Professor Rivas-Rodriguez serve as an important historical and research source of information, it has also served to reunite friends and family members that have until now, not been able to make contact.

Below are PDFs of the website stories from News8 Austin.

News8 Austin Story 01

News8 Austin Story 02

News8 Austin Story 03

It would have been very simple to do and no one would have ever found out.

He could have taken someone else’s work off of the internet and used it for our own purposes (believe it or not, some people actually do that!).

Instead, our Instructional Technology Specialist asked me (the Designer) to take the time to create a graphic that was 11×11 pixels in size. That’s about the size of two match heads. (See below.)

The graphic is actually 810×11 pixels in size, but only 11×11 pixels of it contain any work at all. The rest of the graphic is white space. The process took about 40 minutes with all the edits and tweaks to make sure the final product was just right for our purposes.

This resonates with me because an inherent part of our mission is integrity.

So, what’s the big deal if we swipe a little bit of someone else’s work or copy another person’s work and just change it around a bit? People do it all the time and no one ever finds out.

The big deal is that if we did that, we would be failing ourselves and our mission. Generating content that is offered from a university raises even higher the standard of integrity that we choose to maintain.

“Swiping” = stealing.

The “molehill” of stealing a tiny 11×11-pixel piece of someone else’s artwork becomes a “mountain” because it degrades the reputation of the person who stole that work (not to mention the reputation of anyone who knowingly still uses that stolen work).

What else have they stolen? How many other times have they submitted someone else’s work as their own? Can you trust that person?

Time and Effort.

The end result of the tiny piece of work generated by our Instructional Technology Specialist and myself is a product crafted from original thought, teamwork and integrity.

The work of our team is the sum of the pieces submitted by different team members. This experience has taught me that we can be confident that even the tiniest of those pieces is original.

That little 11×11-pixel graphic is actually one of the pieces of work of which I am the most proud.