The dynamism and look of the site is surely interesting, but it raises
a key usability principle about covers and discovery. I learned this
designing LibraryThing and I think it holds up in the OPAC, and should
not be disregarded in the mad dash to covers:
Covers are not "better" than title / author lists, but different:
1. Covers are great for recognition, because visual memory is faster
than reading.
2. Covers are terrible for discovery of new material, because reading
covers, with all their different typefaces and layouts, is slower than
reading a list.
The recognition/discovery dichotomy is key to LibraryThing. Users
spend some of their time in known items (their books), and some in
unknown items (tag lists, etc.). That is, covers are a great way to
look at your own library, because you can recognize a cover you know
without even reading it. The same applies to looking at someone else's
library on LibraryThing—covers make it easy to quickly spot the books
you share. But covers are a lousy way of showing people items they
*don't* know. A list of unknown books is much easier to deal with than
a phalanx of unknown covers.
Tim
On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Geoff Sinclair <geoffs_at_nipissingu.ca> wrote:
> I believe the Zoomii interface has a lot of potential. It works well for
> what it does because it represents a small bookstore collection. But I don't
> really see that scalability would be a problem for a larger collection if
> you beefed up the browsing options: more specific headings, tag clusters,
> user lists. And, for use as a library application, I'd like to see options
> for subject heading and LC classification browsing.
>
> Geoff
>
> --
> Geoff Sinclair
> Manager of Technical Services
> Education Centre Library, Nipissing University / Canadore College
> Tel: 705-474-3450 x4439
> E-mail: geoffs_at_nipissingu.ca
> Web: http://www.eclibrary.ca
>
>
>
> Steven Harris wrote:
>>
>> Regarding a virtual browse of the shelves: I'm not sure it will work very
>> well for a collection of, say, 2 million volumes. Maybe I'm just too tied
>> to text and books covers would work fine, but seems like it would be
>> unwieldy with very large collections.
>> --Steven Harris
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>
>>>>> "Stephens, Owen" <o.stephens_at_IMPERIAL.AC.UK> 6/25/2008 2:12 am >>>
>>>>>
>>
>> Well, it's cute, but I'm not convinced this kind of 'real life' analogy
>> style interface works particularly well on computers. I remember several
>> years ago seeing a description of a 'virtual desktop', that looked like a
>> real desk, and where you had to 'go to the post office' to send an email -
>> what a pain, when you can just click send!
>>
>> I think experimentation should be encouraged and so it is really nice to
>> see this type of thing being tried, but I tried to use it and found it
>> incredibly clunky - it has impact, but I don't personally believe it has
>> staying power - personally I wouldn't use it instead of Amazon to browse.
>>
>> Owen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>> http://zoomii.com/
>>>>
>>
>>
>
--
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
Received on Thu Jun 26 2008 - 09:19:49 EDT