1. Recipe for making a more usable library catalog

2. Photo by Kimberly Vardeman, Flickr, https://flic.kr/p/85kkzn

3. Washington County Cooperative Library Services
Hello!
I am Marie Martin
Web Administrator
Washington County Cooperative Library Services

4. Questions for you
Housekeeping

5. Why customize the PAC? Branding Usability
Consistent, quality online experience

6. Better usability means: + improved appearance
+ increased user happiness

7. Usability / Accessiblity1
Usability / Accessiblity

8. Buttons
Problems out of the box :
- Clickable area
- Contrast

9. Buttons
Customized

10. Buttons How did we fix the buttons? + display: block;
+ padding on anchor elements
+ strong contrast between text color and background color

11. Tools

12. Checking
Contrast
Juicy Studio Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyzer
Web Aim Color Contrast Checker

13. 2
Usability Testing

14. Tools
We’ve used Treejack, OptimalSort and Chalkmark over the years

15. Menus OptimalSort for online and physical card sorts
Used for both public-facing website and staff Extranet
Public site: we were able to come up with 6 top-level menu items based on patron test results, which we then translated into wireframes that we shared with library staff for further testing.

16. 3
Analytics

17. Know your users
Cookie Dough by Kayla, Flickr,
Oat chocolate chip cookie by Liliana Fuchs, Flickr,

18. Remote vs in-house
Combined PACs:
40% remote visitors
60% in-house

19. + clickable/tapable area for links
+ modified text strings for clarity (Language Editor)

20. Language Editor

21. Menus

22. Menus
Default
Custom

23. 4
Branding

24. Colors
Logo is great, but the green doesn’t have enough contrast with our standard whit background. Had to tweak the colors to find a darker palette, created our own color palette guide that the web team uses for reference whenever we’re updating anything on the site. Keeps us consistent and in line with our logo use guidelines.

26. 5
CSS Tools

27. Dev Tools

28. Testing Tools
iPad and iPhone by Sean MacEntee, Flickr,

29. Wrap up

30. Thanks! Any questions? You can reach me at mariem@wccls.org
Slides will be at

31. Resources
Juicy Studio Color Contrast Analyser
WebAIM Color Contrast Checker
Coquitlam public library (“vanilla” PAC screenshots)

32. Resources Usability.gov – Card-sort article
Usability Testing article in The Active Librarian journal
Language Editor (Polaris tool)

33. Presentation template by SlidesCarnival Photographs by Unsplash
Credits
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Photographs by Unsplash
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