What We're Working On
Launching a redesigned library.harvard.edu was just the beginning. We know building an awesome experience for our users is a journey, not a destination.
Since our new site went live we’ve been committed to:
- listening to user feedback and using it to enhance the website,
- supporting libraries and departments in their use of the site to better communicate their services and tools to users,
- and planning for the future.
Here’s a peek at what we’re working on.
Coming Up
We call each of these themes “epics.” We’ll work on each epic in three phases: research, strategy and design, then development.
As an agile team, this information is always subject to change based on new feedback or testing results, changes in priorities, and other factors.
Events Calendar
We heard: I wish I could more easily search and discover library events and conferences.
How we’re responding: We’re rethinking the technical solution for our events calendar to make it easier to add events for content editors and easier to find and share events for users.
More things
We have some big things in the backlog that are not on the roadmap just yet. Those things include:
- Search 2.2 - improving the results and exploring type-ahead results
- Fellowships and Awards - a new content type for public-facing Library fellowships and awards
- News 1.2 - enhancing the layout and adding in social media content
- In-page Feedback - asking our users about their experience in real-time.
Done
Read our release notes to stay up to date on work we’ve completed so far.
Contribute
If you have thoughts on any of the themes outlined above — or something you don’t see represented — we want to hear from you. We use trends we see in feedback and usability testing to prioritize enhancements and new features.
How We Work
Our mission is to create a digital experience for library users that’s creatively designed, intuitive to use, and endlessly helpful. We imagine a website that people want to use, that makes their research richer, learning fun, and discovery delightful.
We developed these four guiding principles to help keep us on the right path.
Guiding Principles
- Put the user at the center of everything we do.
- Make information accessible, not just available.
- The website will never be “done.”
- Use open source solutions and practices, and pay it forward.
Our Process
We work in three-week sprints, and each sprint has three tracks that we're working on at the same time. For example: the thing that we research in Sprint 1, moves to the strategy and design phase in Sprint 2, then to build in Sprint 3.
Here’s what goes into each track:
Track 1: Research
What do we know, what do we want to learn? We look for insights already gathered via feedback, earlier testing, or analytics. We do more testing if needed.
Track 2: Strategy & Design
We take everything we learned during our research phase and put pen to paper. We define our goals and how we'll measure success. With those goals in mind, we sketch and design new features.
Track 3: Build
The thing we imagined becomes real! We take the finalized designs and write the code to make them work. That code gets tested and deployed to the site, where users can interact with our new features.
Deep Dives
Who We Are
Our team has expertise in everything from agile project management and user experience design to Drupal development and content strategy. We love high fives, gifs, coffee, upbeat oldies, and solving tough problems.
Have comments, questions or just want to talk shop? Email us.