VOLUME 25, NUMBER 9 — October 2005 Computers in Libraries Complete Coverage of Library Information Technology
This Month: Designing
GUIs to Fit User Behavior
Articles in this issue of Computers in
Libraries are available in a variety of formats — Preview, Full
Text, Text+Graphics, and Page Image PDF — on a pay-per-view basis,
courtesy of ITI's
InfoCentral.
Click on the
logo for a summary and full-text purchase options! Articles with theimage
are also available in full-text (HTML) on this site.
FEATURES
Designing a Better
Subject Page to Make Users' Searches More Successful
The way we librarians had organized our subject pages made perfect sense to us
but not to the students who had to use them. However, by watching students search
on our pages, then reformatting them, then retesting and reformatting a couple
more times, we ended up with pages that students could search much more successfully. By Darlene Fichter
Designing a Web Site for One Imaginary Persona
That Reflects the Needs of Many
We all know that "you can't please everybody." You also can't design a Web site
that works well for everybody. What's the solution? Create an imaginary persona
with the characteristics of your main user group, and focus on its needs while
making design decisions. Sound far-fetched? Read this article and decide for
yourself. By Heather Cunningham
Page 15
Using Participatory
Design to Improve Web Sites
One woman learned that the best way to improve her Web sites was to involve the
people most likely to use them in the design. She walks readers through the steps
of participatory design and tells how it differs from user-centered design. By Tatiana Nikolova-Houston
logo for a summary and full-text purchase options! Articles with the
image
are also available in full-text (HTML) on this site. 
