Unveiling.

It's been really nice to know that websites can be in constant beta, and it's made the pressure for designing the new University library website be somewhat less. Still, the process is basically complete and the site is ready to be moved from the development stage to live sometime next week after finals are completely finished.

We did usability testing with undergraduates, and while I'd like to complete usability testing with graduate students and faculty & staff as well, I feel overall good about the results we received from the undergraduates. The major problem was one of terminology, a couple of others were easy fixes to place links where students were looking for the answers.

Other problems lie not so much in the design of the website (students would end up in the correct place to find information) as the design of the tools used to search for the information or a misunderstanding of what databases & catalogs search for. This is something that a metasearch would possibly help, but more importantly, education will help.

Overall, I think the new design works. It's designed in a way that makes sense for the most part, and thankfully seems to make sense to students as well.