Designing the Digital Experience: David Lee King Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

Experience and design-what is it? "an approach to creating successful experiences for people in any medium.”

Ways to Go About It:
1. Structural path-create a better experience by improving ease of use. Navigation does not get in the way.

• building experiences. Strategy->scope->structure->skeleton->surface
• uncover (the customer need)->define the experience brief (what will the customer experience be?)->ideate (immerse yourself in the experience->then build and design it
• getting real, by 37signals.com goal is speed and getting product out to public-->fine tuning should be done by customers--they say write a one page story about what your customers need to do on your site. Make it simple.

How does this work with the library website? His website-lots of focus groups and discussions first, trying to be fluid and get updates out there first. Fix it now and move on.

Look at your site with critical eyes think about the potholes (what makes people stumble and remove it) Big goal: Don't make me think. Customer doesn't want to think about how it functions, if they are forced to do it, you have failed.

2. Community Path: how does it provide positive experiences: a memorable experience created by online participation and community. Digital community experience- customer reviews and ability to rate those reviews. Amazon has done this, a digital community experience. There are five ways to do this:

• real conversation is taking place-commenting on blogs, twitter, online forum, flickr --patrons holding conversations with us, allowing customers to connect with you the librarian and each other. Setting up book clubs on the blog.
  
• invitation: passive and active. Active--asking questions--what's in your top five-you say yours and invite them to add theirs. Passive--content enablers making content compelling and displayed well, creating compelling content - making it interesting and web 2.0 enablers-allowing commenting and moderate promptly.
• participation--other part of invitation point-if you have no participation you have no community online. Allow comments. Goal is to participate in the discussion. Share thoughts and opinions. I want you to add your thoughts, I want to hear what you are saying!
• sense of familiarity--you feel like you know someone because you have 'befriended' them on blogs, twitter, flickr, etc. introduce patrons to library's 'personality'.
• telling our stories--people want to know who you are as an individual as an organization, do you like using your library and what shortcuts you take when using it. People want to participate in the story --they want to feel like they are part of it. See that a lot in Second Life. You can do that online in social networks. For example, Katrina hurricane, people told their stories as it developed. Patrons want to do this. Library stories: what you've read, what you liked, what you are doing. Twitter for the library--
• goal is to hold conversations and connect with community
• focus on the customer path. - customer journey mapping
  

New Strategies for Digital Natives

Helene Blowers-Digital Strategy Director, Columbus Metropolitan Library
Joey is our new digital patron:

The big story in the election was the kid who helped Obama reach out to the digital natives.

We used to chase information, now it has flipped, information finds us. Still, studies show that RSS is kind of flat across all demographics; people still don’t know how to get info to find us. Good role for librarians.

digital native realities:

1. Identity: digital natives: online identity is same as real identity. Idea of having one identity is intuitive to them. It is how they influence and assert themselves online, exchanging information, bantering that goes back in forth.

Top 5 Social Networks – jan 09
1. Facebook 1.19 billion monthy visits
2. Myspace 810 mill visits
3. Twitter 54 mil visits
4. Flixster 53 mil visits (movie reviews
5. Linkedin 43 million visits

These are where digital natives are leaving their footprints. The idea of social identity has become so important that we are graphing it. Linkedin based on the premise of who do you know to further your career. Average age of digital immigrants –42.

Social graphing:
6 degrees of separation
touchgraph
friendwheel on facebook

Renaissance Generation: Patricia Martin: Cultural consumers thrive on information and ideas to fuel their creative self-expression. Creativity very important to them.

• 93% of teenagers are online and intensifying
• Nearly 2/3 of online teens are content creators~Pew Study, Teens & Social Media, 12/07
  

Posting pictures, sharing artistic work, blogging, etc...creates their social identity.
Teens:

1. post messages
2. download music
3. download videos
4. upload music
5. update personal website or online profiles
6. post photots
7. blog

We are starting to see a shift from authoritative control to collaborative control of information. How do you influence people? By sharing information.
OCLC Study --number one resource of getting information online is friends. Libraries are down in the bottom.
In January 09 Encyclopedia Britannica added a wiki layer so that people could add to it. Collective control--->they realized there are advantages to this new form of gathering information. What info source do you trust the most for your company's purchasing decisions: user generated content (blogs, discussion groups, online comm, wikis, etc.) from a study, interesting to see--first hand experience that you get from blogs and rating sites are where people are looking for trusted information.

2. Digital Safety --only .08% of all students say they've actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parents' permission --national school board study July 2007.
Most teens ignore or delete stranger contact and are not bothered by it. (Pew Study).

3. Digital Opportunity
The world has become more accessible for digital natives. Every day the Internet becomes more and more important to society. There are no barriers, the playing field is leveled, you can mashup and mix up online, all you need is access (if you don't have access, library provides it), access is universal, connection is ubiquitous , it's all about me. Their sandbox is huge to play in, to assert their identity and creativity.

4. Digital Piracy
Digital piracy to them is digital sharing. File sharing has become the new normal for most. Copy, remix me. Fanfiction, music parodies, mashups, movie trailers, remix contents, remix fansites (Nine Inch Nails - encouraging fans to remix their content), creative commons (has spurred this whole rethought of copyright). Total Recut: video remix challenge.

In the past you were what you owned--now you are what you share. A collaborative remix culture. How do we respond to it as librarians?

5. Digital Privacy
Facebook:
82% send private messages
84% post messages to a friends page or wall


Lifestreams
Idea of lifestreaming all these social networks can be aggregated and look at it as a lifestream. Digital natives can trace their lives online.

6. Digital Advocacy
The idea of what you do online actually makes a difference. Young people as networkers, organizers, promoters to create their leadership potential, saw it in the election.

What can libraries do?

1. Idea of engagement to enable customers to connect with library staff, services and with each other in meaningful ways. Layering over OPAC with interactivity, twitter? Engagement is important because people want to feel connected. Patrons feel connected. Make the library a facilitators of connection.
2. Enrich - to provide customers with a rich online experience that enhances their local branch experience and daily lives. Our digital space should enhance not be separate, active engagement. All libraries get their funding from somewhere, that funding should be valuing their lives in some way.
3. Empower: to enable customers the ability to personalize and add value to the library experience and allow the community to celebrate themselves.

NYPL Paul Holdengraber

Today's keynote is an interview with Paul Holdengraber—he was brought in to ‘oxygenate’ the New York Public Library—"to make the lions roar in the front to make this heavy institution levitate. To make the building less formidable to make it sexy."

Paul Holdengraber:
Funny guy! He grew up in Belgium, born in Texas, went to Princeton, he taught at Princeton and other colleges, He was a fellow at Getty. Brooke Sheilds was one of his pupils.

Quotes: "52 million items in the library; at first you feel small, then it should empower you to want to learn, to grow, to discover, to get a tingle in the spine" He is interested in transforming things, in what happens in this public place where we go to do an activity that is extremely private. That relationship between public and private fascinates him. He had to make the library irresistible.

"If I knew where inspiration came from I would go there more often."

He institued “Live from the NYPL” --he’s had Bill Clinton, Martin Scorcese, Mario Balti, and many more. He invites people from all walks of life – his favorite moment Myra Kalman – illustrator –Illustrated the elements of style http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2007/10/26/the-elements-of-style/
“I never ask for permission, only for forgiveness.”

“When a great man dies, a library disappears with him.”

He changed the demographics of the audience that comes to a younger audience.

Talking about twitter and blogs: "Info has a life in haiku form on twitter. However we can’t ‘tickle ourselves’ still need to be together."

"Maybe a librarian needs to be a lifebrarian. We need humor in the library. People are bleak cause of the economic situation. We need humor. Create havoc in the library. The books on the shelf are there-what should we do about it—what is our role—take those books off the shelf and make people desire them deeply. Libraries are places of desire. We deeply believe in communicating and transmitting this experience that we probably had as children with a book…how can we imagine a world without books, would I rather have my library or kindles lying around everywhere."

"Digression is the sunshine of narrative."

What is the future of libraries? Fascinated by how libraries might be able to make us focus> in an age of utter distraction, we can go to a library where you learn things, a repository where you can learn things, a place to focus. Use these technology tools to focus on new discoveries. And a great place for opportunities, especially in these times. The reading room in the NYPL is packed…it’s a haven. Our job is a job of hospitality, make people feel at home, public programs is a beautiful way of welcoming others into the home you work in. We have Facebook but let’s get into the face to face encounters. Explode that home, a library without walls, a library that is everywhere, the gift of ubiquity.

Since we are near Washington DC, he wants to end with this anecdote. Here’s how Barack Obama found his community organizer job in Chicago: In 2005, Obama told American Library Magazine that people always mention libraries in terms of sources of reading and research, but he probably wouldn’t be in Chicago if it weren’t for the NYPL, because he was looking for a job as a community organizer in NY…the librarian helped him find these lists of organizations, one of them wound up being an organization in Chicago that he got a job with…..the rest is history….

If Paul doesn't make you feel good about being a librarian, I don't know what will!

Internet @Schools East Presentation

This is the presentation I gave yesterday at the Internet @Schools East Conference. There's a lot to digest here, including some tips from some of the gurus I respect and have learned from, including David Warlick, Joyce Valenza, Mark Wagner, and David Pogue. For those of you who attended the session yesterday, I hope this helps! Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about the presentation!

Internetatschools

View more presentations from kkliegman.

Computers in Libraries Conference -Day One

Opening Keynote: Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet and American Life Project

I am here in very windy Arlington, Virginia waiting for Lee Rainie to begin. The conference is at the Hyatt Regency, which is quite a nice hotel. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to get a room here so I did not know that they had a lovely free breakfast here for attendees and I paid $13.00 for an egg white omelet at my hotel.

I didn't realize what a big conference this is! There are librarians of all types here. -a lot of academic librarians. There are attendees here from 49 states, plus 18 countries outside of the U.S. I just might be one of the very few elementary school librarians here. There are over 2,000 attendees here.

"Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience." -Clarence Day.

Lee is talking about Twitter. Only 5% of the people here know about or are using Twitter. Surprised.
Lee is talking about “Behold Homo Connectus”: We are a different species with a different sense of things:
1. Volume and variety of information has grown tremendously with millions of users creating content. People can screen out what they don’t want.
2. The speed of information speeds up—the way you find info now through social networks speeds things up. We can create our own playlists of media, in other words, there is a time shift and place shift in accessing media.
3. The relevance of information improves as the number of voices explodes. Voting and ventilating are enabled. We can explain what is going on in our world and there is ample opportunity for us to talk back to institutions.
4. Social networks are more vivid. We can fall back on our social networks for support.

So, how does this relate to the role of the librarian? Less says that personal activities and media have come together; institutions can be active in people’s networks like never before. Librarians can find ways to be reliable gatekeepers and sensemakers that people will appreciate.

Internet @Schools Sessions:
Finally got to meet David Hoffman, editor of Multimedia and Internet@ Schools Magazine. He has been extremely nice and helpful in getting me here to this conference within the conference, aimed specifically at school library media specialists. Our sessions are in another room (not the best venue - has huge columns that block your view of either the speaker or the screen). Due to a cancellation of one of the sessions, my session got moved up to right after lunch from the 4:15 slot (sigh of relief). There are approximately 50 LMS's attending these workshops. The first presenter is Sheila Gersh, from CCNY to talk about her project, CultureQuest.
http://www.culturequest.us
http://www.schoollink.org/twin
I am going to connect Sheila with some people in TEAM. I have students creating a collaborative project called Cultureshare - this is a natural. CultureQuest started 5 years ago at CCNY: inquiry-based investigations of other peoples and cultures that are rooted in student questions and based upon student interests. Projects focus on literature, art, music, history, government, and more. Sheila talking about a model-->P is the problem-->E expert learners-->L learners, all working together to solve the problem. CultureQuest projects are based on this model. Talking about ePals for global collaboration.

Leap and the NETS Will Appear:
Next up is Johanna Riddle, who, unfortunately is having many technical problems in her presentation. One of the things she talked about is a project using the book Owen and Maze (love that book) as a jumping point for guided discussion, comparison and research. She is focusing alot on strategies for incorporating visual literacy into instruction with young students.

Using Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts to Promote Books and 21st C Skills:
This was a very informative session. Patrick Ledesma and Cecelia Carmenate from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia are talking about using blogs to promote discussion. In their example, the librarian creates a blog in which she poses questions that students respond to. For incentives, they have "blogger of the month" in which they give rewards to the students who blog the most. The librarian posts questions, such as "can you judge a book by its cover?" This gives them the opportunity to engage in discussion. Librarian responds to the readers and comments. Can be used to tie in books with current events and books and their movie version. Important to add pictures and media. Blog like this shows that the library can also be a place for fun. You can embed the movie trailer into the blog.

Spotlighting Good Literature Through Technology: Video Book Talks:
Eloise Long and Eileen Kern from PA
They are discussing booktalks in the library - a booktalk is a structured mini-mystery with a cliffhanger ending. They are inspiring me to do this, but I would have my students do it. Some of the web 2.0 tools that they suggest for this are:

• Goanimate
• Voki
• VoiceThread
• Xtra Normal
• Moviemaker
• Makebeliefcomix
  

Also are recommending the book The Tech-Savy Booktalker: A guide for 21st Century Educators

General Comments About Day One:
I think that my session went very well, I got a lot of nice feedback. I also met Stephanie Rosalia, the librarian who was featured in the New York Times Article (Librarian Job Gets an Update) and had a nice conversation with her. Mostly, I came away from today realizing that I have come a long way as a school media specialist; I don't assume, but sort of expect, that most LMS will know about most of the tools that were presented here today by myself and others - but surprisingly, that is not the case. Many of the LMS here today have to deal with the fact that teachers have to spend so much time teaching to state tests that they don't have time to take their students to the library. My suggestion there was to tell them to let those teachers know that you can help them by creating research projects that deal with a part of the curriculum- take a little of the load off of them.

This was my first time presenting at a national conference that is geared strictly to librarians. I had an 'aha' moment, realizing that I have a lot to offer in the area of professional development to my colleagues. As a whole, school library media specialists are up against a lot~ in many states and districts we are not even mandated and are replaced by regular teachers; we are up against mandated testing, small budgets, lack of help, and often lack of support. This makes it imperative that we take read-write web by the horns and make ourselves indispensable! That was the theme of my presentation. We can make ourselves indispensable by not only being the experts, but also by modeling the use of web 2.0 tools in our library media centers. On top of that, we have to be the ones to lead in teaching digital and information literacy skills to students. That has to be our focus now.

David Pogue Part II: Extreme Googling

Google's motto: "Don't be evil" :)

By the way, David won an Emmy for a story about Google. How did Google come to be? Two guys from Stanford - came up with the idea of a search engine that searches how many other pages link to your page, rather than just look for the words you are searching for. They got to be rich and powerful through the ads. The ads are labeled sponsored links ~until that time, other search engines buried the ads in search results.

Google means 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The word 'google' itself is a misspelling, cause the two guys did not know how to spell it!

Other Tips from David:

• "I'm feeling lucky" means just take me to the top search result - it will go right to the website.
  
• Word order counts in composing a search...most important words should be first. Don't bother putting in little words.
  
• Maximum number of words in a search is 10. Plurals matter.
  
• You can type two dots to look for a range like miami 1985..2000.
  
• If your result is a picture or a movie, it will show right in the result.
  
• For some organizations, they give you a table of contents in the results. This is relatively new.
  
• For some big sites, you even get a search box within (like the ny times).
  
• The greatest google trick of all: every website such as Amazon, YouTube, etc. all have their own search boxes, but the google search box is better than theirs. For example, google is a better searcher of ebay than ebay is itself. You are better off putting the name of the site and the item that you are looking for and then click "I'm feeling lucky" it will take you right to the site. (e.g. amazon eat love pray)--click feeling lucky. You will go directly to the book on their website without any intermediate steps.
• Asterisk is the wildcard - great for song lyrics that you can't understand (excuse me while I kiss the *)
  

Encyclopedia of life

• The ''ooos" in Google at the bottom of the page over the page numbers are also pages to click on.
• Doing a search for "showtimes and your zipcode" will give you a table of every movie playing in your areas with reviews by peopole.
• You can type define: and a word and it will show you dictionary definition.
• You can also type math calculations into the google search box; it is also a calculator.
  
• Also a converter: inches in a mile.
  
• Also currency converter = type in dollars in a euro. Weather plus city takes you to weather right there.
• You can type in a barcode number and then look it up!
  
• Can also type in a flight like 'united 22' and will give you the status of the flight.
  
• Can type in a VIN number and find out the history of the car.
  
• In preferences you can turn off porn filtering.
• In google language translator you can type in the whole website address and it will translate the whole page.
• iGoogle was created in someone's 20% time.
• phonebook:name place - get someones phone number.
• google maps for directions shows you traffic too and you can drag the route to another road; instantly recalculates directions. shows construction and accidents. Click on cameras next to directions to see street view. you can pan around too.

ASSET 2009: Keynote~David Pogue: "The Digital Generation Grows Up"

David Pogue: And He Sings, Too!

Live blogging, so excuse the typos! David Pogue is the technology writer for the New York Times and appears on CNBC and has written best-selling "how-to" books, including some of the "Dummy" books. He looks at new technologies coming down the pipe.

TREND 1: What happens when you merge cellphone and Internet?
Google Cellular (free) info is texted to you~google 411. (46645). Weather, flight info, stock quotes, movie showtimes, as well as:

• Flight info (aa 152)
• Movie showtimes (shrek plus zip code)

• 800-GOOG-411 by voice dial from any phone, state the location and business type, and it connects to the business for free. You don't get the phone number, you don't need it, it just connects you. That's the beauty of it - like your own personal operator.
  
• ChaCha (800-2CHACHA) will answer any questions. Anything you ask, they text you back the answer. They employ 10,000 people who sit in front of Google and are paid .20 an answer.
  
• Voice to Text--get your voicemails converted into text for free, and the recording is actually in the email. Offered by phonetag, callwave, spinbox. Google entered this with Google Voice (wow this is great) - it comes to your phone or email for free you make up a number and then it reads all of your phones, one unified number and one unified email box. Turns text messages into first class communication. See David's video from last Sunday's online NY Times.
  

TREND 2: ONLINE 24/7 ~
David asks, "What's so hard about giving us wifi everywhere we want it?" Well, in reality, being online all the time and everywhere has snuck up on us with the changes in cellular - iPhone really started this.

Apple just released an iPod So Small Its Controls Are Found on the Cord

(Look for iPhone shuffle video on YouTube (a parody).)

Until the iPhone came along, cell phones developers would go to the carriers like Verizon with new ideas but the carrier was the gatekeeper. It was not a system conducive to innovation. Steve Jobs went to Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, AT&T bought Cingular, they all laughed him out of the idea of an Apple iPhone, except for Cingular. The amazing thing is when Apple opened up the apps store - the world changed from this! People spend more time on the apps then on making calls. Some cool apps (I wish I had an iPhone!!):

• Pandora, free internet radio, type in the name of a song and and immediately plays the song you want. Immediately feeds you another song by another band that is similar, you give it thumbs up or down, gives you more songs, based on the feedback, eventually you create a radio station that you love.
  
• Urbanspoon where you are standing when you are looking for a restaurant.

  Urbanspoon on the iPhone is part Magic 8 Ball, part slot machine. You shake your phone and it finds a good nearby restaurant for you. Keep shaking it until it comes back with something you want to try.

• This is a whole new paradigm, selling $1 apps. See Davids article about Ocarina.
• Verizon now will open up their network. Now Google has a phone (TMobile G1) has its own app store and the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications to run on Android-powered devices.
  

Trend #3: Web 2.0

So we know that Web 1.0 consisted of websites where we provide the material. Web 2.0 is radically different. Facebook is so hot. Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook for 240 million dollars.
( SubEthaEdit -everyone can collaborate on the same notes.)
According to David:

• Craigslist -- it's killing the American newspaper. You'd be an idiot to pay for a classified ad in a newspaper.

• YouTube-sold 1 year after creating it to Google for over a billion dollars!

• domystuff.com you post your grudge work and people bid to get paid to do it.
  

• goloco-you say where you going, other people ride with you, share rides
  

• epetitions.com anyone can start a petition about anything

• who is sick ok this one cracks me up and I know a lot of hypochondriacs that would like this site...

WHAT DOES THS ALL MEAN for next generation? Things splinter, things add on and become more things. Everything is in real time - kids insist on this - "nobody does email anymore" it has to be instant, text messaging, chat or twitter.
Privacy- nobody cares, they (this generation) advertise their personal stuff on Facebook, they want people to know --maybe they are the "Ego Generation" - how many friends do you have on facebook, twitter??

Speed+ego-privacy=twitter. Its like a big cocktail party but incredibly powerful.

Need an opinion??

• IMDB (Internet Movie Database): collates opinions of 11 million people and they are never wrong! :)

• angieslist Use when looking for service - consumer reviews

• cnet Technology-related reviews

• rateyour doctor

So...
Everything is on demand - itunes store, hulu (free tv on demand) the last 4 episodes of every single network show is available for free. Internet is your tivo. Even on demand cable (not pay per view) watch it when you want. On demand movies from amazon (selection not good, quality is not good) When you rent a movie online you have 24 hrs. to watch it.

Tech Shifts-->Cultural shifts
Do you speak their language?
LOL, AFK, BRB, POS

COPYRIGHT CHALLENGES - gray areas: - take the test..which one do you think is a copyright infringement??

• I borrow a cd from the library
• I own a cd but it got scratched and so I go to the library, borrow the cd and rip it to my pc
• I have 200 vinyl records and I borrow them on cds and I rip those
• I buy a dvd but I have a 3 yr old so I use an illegal prgram to make another copy in case the 3-yr-old ruins it.
  
• I record a movie off of HBO using my dvd burner (legal)
• I meant to do it, but I forgot, but my buddy recorded it and I copy his dvd
• I recorded an HBO movie, but my dvd broke so I got the movie from blockbuster and copied that.

He did this with college students, no one thought any of these were illegal.
We have to teach privacy, permanence - chat rooms- teach credibility--power of web--i.e. think of Steve Jobs rumor--apple stock fell after that-- see snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.

You can't predict the future of technology.
Oh, and did I mention, David Pogue sings, too? :)

snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.