Rebecca Beasley
Assignment 2a: Heuristic Evaluation
Chula Vista, CA, is located seven miles north of the US-Mexico border and seven miles south of downtown San Diego; with over 200,000 residents, Chula Vista is now the second-largest city in San Diego county. The Chula Vista Library represents one of twenty-five City Services in the City of Chula Vista. Like all library websites, this site aims to inform users of library offerings, services, events, and other related information; as a public library and city governmental website, it is freely available, and due to the large Spanish-speaking population in Chula Vista, some of the library's pages are available in Spanish.
I lived in Chula Vista from the ages of 4-18 and spent an enjoyable part of my youth at the Chula Vista Library; the city of Chula Vista has grown and changed significantly since I left for college in 1992 (in the 1980's there was only a single library, now referred to as the Civic Center Branch). I haven't returned to Chula Vista in over 15 years, so I wanted to explore the library website as someone who is familiar with the city and the library, but whose experience and regular use of the library pre-dates any kind of online presence. In viewing the Chula Vista Library website, I deliberately did not use the library catalog or any of the electronic databases available to off-site users; I didn't want any usability issues I may have encountered to be the result of system constraints or related to a poor system design of a commercial databases. Also, as a non-resident, I didn't attempt to access or deliberately explore any pages of the site that were specifically aimed at services or information for residents or library card holders (e.g., How to get a card, Computer Classes, etc.). This approach limited my options of 'things to do' on a public library website and has affected the logic and linearity of my findings, but in my position as a long-ago user of this library, a long-time library employee, and a student of Library and Information Studies, I was genuinely interested in the areas of the site that I did browse and explore (After School Programs, Special Services, and Policies, respectively) and did not seek out or hunt for the usability flaws that I encountered.
Consistency and standards: Despite the URL indicating that I was on the library's home page (http://www.chulavistalibrary.com/), the library's site is really a site-within-a-site, reflecting the library's status as one of many city departments/web sites in the larger City of Chula Vista web site; however, from a usability standpoint, when I wanted to return to the library's homepage at any time during my exploration of the library site, selecting the Home tab at the top of the page took me to the City of Chula Vista homepage, and not the Chula Vista Library homepage. Each of the Library web pages has a left-side, tan colored, vertical, menu bar with a 'Library Home' hyperlink listed first, but it is much less noticeable (and is in a smaller type size then even the general text on the rest of the pages) than the large blue and white Home tab that is prominently at the top on every page. Users have been conditioned to expect 'Home' to return them to the home page of the site they are visiting (and users have also been cautioned against using the Back arrow in some systems) and users of this site should not have to know or remember the hierarchical government structure of the City of Chula Vista when they are using the Chula Vista Library website.
Error prevention: On the Chula Vista Library home page, under the 'Most Requested' heading, there are links to information about the STRETCH and DASH After School Programs and the DASH '06-07 Enrollment Lottery Results with two sub-links for Traditional Schools and Year-Round Schools. The Year-Round Schools link presents a message to the user:
DASH Program Enrollment: Year Round Schools
Coming soon...
but the Traditional Schools link takes users to a completely blank page [Dr. Marty-in the event that this has been corrected by the time you visit this site, I promise that on June 5th this page was completely blank!!] Interestingly, the reason why there are no Lottery Results listed for either type of schools is explained in the brief article announcing this program ("New Lottery for DASH After-School Program") which is adjacent to these links on the library's home page: "DASH enrollment application forms for the 2006-07 school year will be available only on the last day of school this year----June 13 at year-round schools and June 15 at traditional-schedule schools---beginning at the time school is dismissed until 5:45 p.m." Clearly, Lottery Results cannot be made available for a lottery that has not yet taken place, but the links to these not-yet-existent results do not need to be available either (especially as some of the very first links available on the library's home page). Encountering an entirely blank page in a web site is alarming (almost worse in some ways than an Error or other 404-type message that at least conveys information to a user); it caused me to refresh my browser window several times and to even try viewing the same page using a different browser, just to confirm it was blank. Also, links on web pages shouldn't precede the information they intend to connect to.
Recognition rather than recall: While exploring the Special Services offered at or by the various branches of the Chula Vista Library, I was surprised to see that the descriptions of services aimed at users with visual impairments were composed in the same small type-size as the rest of the site. Users requiring an enlarging viewer or interested in knowing which Braille "talking books" were a part of the library's collection would most likely not be able to read about these services on the library's web site. Also, the introductory paragraph at the top of this page instructs users to contact the branch manager "if there is something else we can assist you with", but the link provided (Locations) lists the hours and location information of each branch, but not the names of any of the branch managers. (In fact the only way to find out the names and direct phone numbers for any of the branch managers is by clicking on the contact us via the web link at the very bottom the the Special Services page, which lists a library staff directory under the online web form--not an intuitive link to follow if one wants a phone number!) This page has failed to make information visible to the users most likely needing these services and because of this failure, the page has required users to have to recall information unnecessarily (needing to find a name and contact information for a branch manager) which could easily have been listed on this page (there are only 3 branch managers.) Interestingly, the opportunity to change the text size is an available feature on the library's Calendar of Events (which, at the bottom of this page, indicates that it is "powered by e-vanced Solutions".)
Aesthetic and minimalist design: The Policies page (found listed on the menu bar on the About the Library page) defies any intent toward minimalist design or non-redundancy. The page presents links to eight different policies and the menu bar, immediately to the left of the page, presents the same links, in a slightly different order and with some alternate wording (e.g., the link on the page is entitled, Policy & Application for the use of Meeting Rooms, while the menu bar link is called, Meeting Room--clicking on either link, incidentally, still requires the user to click on an additional link to actually launch the Meeting Room Policy and Application as a PDF file.) The duplication of this information on a single page, side-by-side is wholly unnecessary and confusing to users; the slight changes in wording of these links wastes users time by requiring them to explore the same link twice (with the exception of the Local History Room link on the menu bar that mistakenly takes users to the Brief History of Chula Vista page of the Library's site, and not the Local History Room Policy.)
The Chula Vista Library website aims to represent the physical and electronic collections, services, facilities and programs of an impressive and inviting public library system; the site presents a wealth of information across numerous web pages. This site is aesthetically pleasing and persistent visitors to this site will most likely find the information that they want or need--but they may have to spend an unnecessary amount of time to do so and will have to get familiar and comfortable with the frequent use of the 'Library Home' link. Some of the limitations and usability flaws on the Chula Vista Library page are a result of its placement as a site-within-a-site; some most likely result from the oversights and errors of a harried web designer (or more likely a design team) that is charged with maintaining hundreds of the city's pages and should be more focused on conducting some basic usability tests to identify these flaws (and certainly others) and examining ways to minimize or eliminate them. As a city government department and an important cultural center, Chula Vista Library and its library website must aim to serve a diverse user population--children, non-English speakers, individuals with disabilities, etc.--with a wide variety of information needs, I think this lofty task has been adequately accomplished.