Thursday, December 04, 2008

Less is More

I had the opportunity to be a user the other day. The only difference is that I knew better than to just give up or go buy the book from Amazon when faced with an error message. I wanted to request a book, but didn't notice that it was already checked out and so chose the wrong form. If it happened to me, I'm pretty sure it happens to other people too. There are actually FIVE different forms to choose from if you want to "request this item".

  1. Pick up item at my circ desk
  2. Get checked out/overdue item for me
  3. Put on reserve for my course
  4. Request a pdf of article or chapter
  5. Email a pdf of this microform


    I can see that each choice is different. I realize that there are probably at least five different back room processes for each of these choices, but do users really need to know about them? Haven't we learned anything from google? One box please.

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