Does your library’s floor plan or system of organization match the conceptual model of your users? MPOW doesn’t (not always) and this fact has never sat well with me, ever since I set foot across the library’s threshold as an employee.
A conceptual model, in case you don’t know, is a collection of thoughts and information that we use to help us figure out how something works, because the parts of the object are visible and the implications of the object are all clear. For example, if we look at a bicycle, our conceptual model probably tells us that this is a self-propelled vehicle that should be operated by a seated human being. The clues come from the seat, the pedals, and the position of the wheels, seat, handlebars, and pedals in relation to each other which suggest the proper position of the body when operating the vehicle.
At MPOW, the division I work in was once called Newspapers and Magazines (it is called something else now, and I’ll get to that in a bit.) By giving the division this label, we’ve set the expectation that leads our patrons to think that if they come to level 5 in our building, they will find all the newspapers and magazines we subscribe to in one section. We’ve helped them form a conceptual model of how the library organizes its collection.
Except that’s not really how we operate. We do keep newspapers in a newspaper reading gallery on this floor, and we also have a few magazines, but other magazines are scattered throughout the library in their subject divisions. If I wanted to read Popular Photography, for example, rather than coming to the Newspapers and Magazines floor, I’d instead have to go to the Fine Arts & History division to find it.
The division is now called Online Information & News, a name that was selected (I assume) because it gave more prominence to the library’s electronic resource collection, which is quite extensive, even with the cutbacks we recently made. I remember thinking when the new name was announced that this wasn’t necessarily a step in the right direction, because by putting the word ‘online’ at the beginning of the phrase, we’re now telling the user that all of our information (whatever that means) can be found online. This causes a great deal of confusion for those users who come to our floor expecting to be able to walk over to any computer and pull up a digitized copy of The Vancouver Sun from 1928. Guess what? They can’t. This collection isn’t online.
And did I mention that we also keep closed stacks items from the Fine Arts & History division on our floor?
I wish I knew the right answer to this labelling problem and could come up with a name for the division that matched the user’s conceptual model and expectation. It would make sense to me that if we are called “Newspapers and Magazines” that all magazines the library subscribes to should be found on this floor. I know other libraries are moving toward a hybrid system of organization that keeps the best part of subject-based organization while experimenting with organization schemes that are more in line with bookstores.
This isn’t a brain dump that has answers. Rather, it’s an attempt for me to focus my thinking on the importance of suggesting or creating an experience that closely matches the user’s expectations. These kinds of mental models work best when the operation at hand is clearly observable, and when the visible parts of that system are consistent with the system image (the labelling).
It’s our job as librarians (the designers) to make sure that our design model matches the user’s mental model. Typically, the only way designers and users can communicate is through the system image (the library design), so we should ensure that everything about our product is consistent with the patron’s expectations. Users get all their knowledge about a system from the system image, and if that system image doesn’t match their expectations, they’ll be frustrated. Or they’ll do what I’ve seen dozens of times: they’ll take a step back, look at the sign on the wall, and look at the person behind the desk as if they’re a crazy person.
We’ve made our library harder to use than it needs to be. We’re making our users tense, and when people are tense, they aren’t willing to or capable of learning. They get tunnel vision and become more rigid, and start seeing us as the problem, rather than the solution.