by davidleeking on November 28, 2006
by davidleeking on November 24, 2006
by davidleeking on November 21, 2006
I have a Yahoo email account (honestly I don’t check it too often). But Trillian (IM client) sends little “reminder” messages to me once in awhile that I have mail in the inbox of my Yahoo account. So I decided to go clean it out today.
When I did, I was greeted with a chance to try the beta version of their new email app. It’s very nice – lots of Ajaxy goodness, like dragging and dropping emails into folders, single click/double click things, etc – it pretty much works like the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook.
But when I chose to use the beta product, I was immediately dropped into a brief training session. And that’s what I’m really blogging about today. ‘Cause they did a great job in the training session!
Take a peek at the screenshot to the left. They provided a little animated guy that guided me through the training session, complete with easy-to-do tasks (ie., dragging and dropping email to a folder) that quickly taught me what I needed to know about the beta product.
There was also a bar at the bottom of the screen that showed me how far along I was in the training session (presumably there so I could see that I was almost finished), and the animated guy was nice – he “said” encouraging things as I moved along in the tutorial.
And then, when I completed the tutorial, the animated guy did a little dance, and confetti fell! Seriously (take a peek at the pic). How cool is that?
I think libraries could learn a few things from this little moment in my life:
- Make training fun! – The Yahoo session provided training, but did it in a light, fun way. Can our library training sessions and our online training sessions and tipsheets be fun, too? I think so
- Celebrate success – Yahoo encouraged me by telling me I was doing a good job during the session, and celebrated (by dancing and confetti) after the session. Not sure our bibliographic instruction librarians should start dancing after a training session… but I think we CAN make our materials and our teaching moments positive. We can be encouraging – in person, on paper, and online.
- Offer Proactive training – This Yahoo session popped up before I entered the new email app. We need to make sure we offer training on a new product BEFORE it’s released! That goes for OPAC upgrades, new blogs, or even offering RSS feeds for the first time. Make sure to train both your staff and your public, so they know what to do with the new product or service.
- Offer help when needed – Yahoo figured some people would need a little more guidance, so they created a way to offer that guidance – when it was needed. They also provide a Help link if I need more help later on. Again, I think libraries can do this, too.
- Provide “just enough” teaching – This training session lasted 2-5 minutes, and provided just enough information so that I could read and manage my email. They didn’t include the history of Yahoo, show me changes to Yahoo email over time, etc. They gave me just what I needed and nothing more. Library training can do much the same thing – for example, why not create a quick, 5-minute screencast on how to do a basic search in the catalog – and then provide pointers to further instruction if needed? That way, everyone gets just what they need to do a search, and they’re given the option to get more help if/when needed.
Just some thoughts (mainly caused by that little dancing dude from Yahoo…
by davidleeking on November 14, 2006
CK’s Blog recently posted something that might prove rather useful when you are explaining the benefits of blogging to others. CK polled readers of her blog, asking them “what is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging?” Then she condensed everything into a handy-dandy little pdf file.
Check out the PDF file! There are some great quotes there, including:
- Feedback: “our blog has allowed us to get instantaneous feedback on our work”
- Knowledge: “I get to interact and learn from marketers that are smarter than I am…”
- Self Improvement: “Blogging makes you better at what you do”
- Organize My Thoughts: “it gives me a whiteboard to organize my thoughts”
- Learning: “I love the chance to learn by doing that blogging represents”
(Found on the Church of the Customer blog)
by davidleeking on November 13, 2006
Go here and watch what happened at Internet Librarian International! The Delft Public Library has been videoblogging for awhile (here’s their feed), and they captured cool slices of the conference.
Check it out!
by davidleeking on November 11, 2006
What’s the title of this page? Here are your options, by just taking a quick glance at the page:
- Teens News (title tag, small type under large "start pages" text in orange box)
- Start Pages (highlighted text in both orange areas, highlighted text in blue menu)
- Teens’ News (highlighted text in left-hand menu and in larger orange box breadcrumb link)
- Teens’ News Detail (phrase found by carrot – underneath orange box)
- Teens Feature Highlights (text dropped in an outlined box)
- Teen (largest text on page – but also most difficult to see)
- audience_teens_features (from the URL)
I’m not picking on Seattle – just using them as an example (I’m sure I’ve made similar pages!). Good, simple IA practice would tell us that:
- we need to pick one of these titles for the page, and name everything else the same
- this page needs fewer words that look like titles
- the page file name (audience_teens_features) needs to match the title of the page
- The breadcrumb link (if you must include one) needs to match the name of the page
- The title, breadcrumb link, page file name, etc should all match
- Most importantly – anything in a larger font size looks like a title – you need to make sure it IS a title!
- Also important – anything you highlight will look like a title – make it so
Now – take a peek at your own website – how does it fare compared to this example? What improvements can you make?
ia, information architecture, usability, ,web design
by davidleeking on November 9, 2006
by davidleeking on November 6, 2006
Veen’s presentation on Next Generation Web Design and Web 2.0 rocks. It rocks on many levels:
- It uses great presentation design… the slides look cool, they’re very visual, and you can get the gist of his message by just looking through the slides (but you can also tell you’re missing alot of good content, too)
- It shows a “where design is headed” roadmap
So… web dudes and other interested parties – go check it out!
by davidleeking on November 5, 2006
Mainly posting this to remember it… but zamzar.com is cool! It’s a free file converter page – point to a file, tell zamzar what you want the file to convert to, and TADA! – zamzar converts the file to the new format.
Pretty nifty! Here’s the large list of formats they handle…