New design / design philosophy
I've done some tweaks to the design. I've wanted to do this for some time and never found the time. The nail in the coffin was an email that described the top bar on the old design as "dangerously close to greige." Ouch.
There's a lot more I need to tweak, but that's true of every aspect of the site. I'm worried that tweaks like this make LibraryThing look too corporate and static. But the old design was ugly and corporate and static, so I think it's an improvement.
Playing with the design got me thinking about large issues of graphic and social design. How "accessible" should LibraryThing be? By accessible I mean what people mean when they call a book accessible—easy for a large group of people to get into. I'm a little afraid of making LibraryThing too accessible, too appealing.
User photos. One way of doing this would be to put user photos front and center. Social sites like Friendster, Tribe or MySpace, even LibraryThing's (nearly moribund) competitor Mediachest do this. Photos add impact and—let us be frank—sex appeal.
Social software home pages are particular locus of user-photo activity, with the meat-market aspect paramount. I have no proof, but I believe most social software site's "random pictures" algorithms have a one-hottie minimum. I particularly appreciate Mediachest's non-rotating homepage hottie, "Becca from Seattle" (at right), who attests that she used Mediachest and "met some cute guys that actually shared my interests."* As Twain says, I am girding up my loins to doubt this. Not only does the photo not reside in the user photo directory, but Mediachest requires a state and zip code, and allows a geographic lookup—no Becca in Seattle.
I think there's reason to believe that LibraryThing users don't want that sort of atmosphere. LibraryThing makes it very easy to add an image. (The preset ones are one of my favorite features. It warms my heart every time someone discovers the software "easter egg" there.) But of even serious users only about half have chosen one. Among the ones who have are the two lasses at right. Their favorite tags are "democratic capitalism" and "almost but not quite a dictionary." Their favorite books are... okay, that's from Friendster and appears to be a magazine photo. (Real people don't wear matching underwear.) As far as I'm concerned, this is the enemy. I think most LibraryThing users will agree.
Friends. There are a lot of other places where LibraryThing could broaden its appeal and play up the social aspect. Another example is "friends." At present LibraryThing allows you to add users to a "watch list," not a "buddy list." The difference is that nobody knows who's on your watch list—it's a glorified bookmark. Buddies lists are very public. I did this because I hate the social dynamics of buddies lists. "I'm his buddy but he's not my buddy." "She's got 200 buddies," etc. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember Reagan's first term, but I find this sort of this pretty irritating and pointless. Am I being a stick in the mud?
Incidentally, I will be adding "groups." I'm not quite sure how they'll work but the idea will be to allow people to search for books within a set of libraries. The point is more functional than social. Users have been begging for a way for their whole knitting or book club to get on LibraryThing and search a combined library.
Wrap up. So where should LibraryThing's design go? Would more use of user photos make the site more fun and immediate or do they lead down a slippely slope? Should I turn the "watch list" into a "buddy list." Should LibraryThing allow users to enter zip codes and search for them, a la Mediachest? In sum, should I bend the design more to the conventions and expectations of other social software, or should LibraryThing try hard NOT to do this?
Comments appreciated. Sorry for the long post.
PS: Holy smokes—21,000 books added yesterday! That's double the ususal rate. I think LibraryThing will hit 1.5 million books tomorrow, and 2 million tags the day after.
*Note: I am doing criticism, which entitles me to use the photo as fair use.
There's a lot more I need to tweak, but that's true of every aspect of the site. I'm worried that tweaks like this make LibraryThing look too corporate and static. But the old design was ugly and corporate and static, so I think it's an improvement.
Playing with the design got me thinking about large issues of graphic and social design. How "accessible" should LibraryThing be? By accessible I mean what people mean when they call a book accessible—easy for a large group of people to get into. I'm a little afraid of making LibraryThing too accessible, too appealing.
User photos. One way of doing this would be to put user photos front and center. Social sites like Friendster, Tribe or MySpace, even LibraryThing's (nearly moribund) competitor Mediachest do this. Photos add impact and—let us be frank—sex appeal.
Social software home pages are particular locus of user-photo activity, with the meat-market aspect paramount. I have no proof, but I believe most social software site's "random pictures" algorithms have a one-hottie minimum. I particularly appreciate Mediachest's non-rotating homepage hottie, "Becca from Seattle" (at right), who attests that she used Mediachest and "met some cute guys that actually shared my interests."* As Twain says, I am girding up my loins to doubt this. Not only does the photo not reside in the user photo directory, but Mediachest requires a state and zip code, and allows a geographic lookup—no Becca in Seattle.I think there's reason to believe that LibraryThing users don't want that sort of atmosphere. LibraryThing makes it very easy to add an image. (The preset ones are one of my favorite features. It warms my heart every time someone discovers the software "easter egg" there.) But of even serious users only about half have chosen one. Among the ones who have are the two lasses at right. Their favorite tags are "democratic capitalism" and "almost but not quite a dictionary." Their favorite books are... okay, that's from Friendster and appears to be a magazine photo. (Real people don't wear matching underwear.) As far as I'm concerned, this is the enemy. I think most LibraryThing users will agree.Friends. There are a lot of other places where LibraryThing could broaden its appeal and play up the social aspect. Another example is "friends." At present LibraryThing allows you to add users to a "watch list," not a "buddy list." The difference is that nobody knows who's on your watch list—it's a glorified bookmark. Buddies lists are very public. I did this because I hate the social dynamics of buddies lists. "I'm his buddy but he's not my buddy." "She's got 200 buddies," etc. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember Reagan's first term, but I find this sort of this pretty irritating and pointless. Am I being a stick in the mud?
Incidentally, I will be adding "groups." I'm not quite sure how they'll work but the idea will be to allow people to search for books within a set of libraries. The point is more functional than social. Users have been begging for a way for their whole knitting or book club to get on LibraryThing and search a combined library.
Wrap up. So where should LibraryThing's design go? Would more use of user photos make the site more fun and immediate or do they lead down a slippely slope? Should I turn the "watch list" into a "buddy list." Should LibraryThing allow users to enter zip codes and search for them, a la Mediachest? In sum, should I bend the design more to the conventions and expectations of other social software, or should LibraryThing try hard NOT to do this?
Comments appreciated. Sorry for the long post.
PS: Holy smokes—21,000 books added yesterday! That's double the ususal rate. I think LibraryThing will hit 1.5 million books tomorrow, and 2 million tags the day after.
*Note: I am doing criticism, which entitles me to use the photo as fair use.
posted by Tim at 4:25 AM
39 Comments:
I'm a new user (signed up yesterday) and I'm quite happy with the design aspects of LibraryThing. Where I see room for improvements is data entry and data reuse. I think adding some AJAX could help on data entry. I add a lot books the manual way because they are either too old to have an ISBN or their ISBN is not known to Amazon. It would be great if LibraryThing could automatically look for missing data in the entries of other users. Eg. when I'm entering a title of a book another User already has entered his data should be suggested automatically.
The same goes for tagging. It would be nice to get some suggestions on tags based upon what other users tagged a book.
And a last minor suggestion: Add a quick way to go to the "Change cover image" dialog from the list when no cover is available. Doing this inpage AJAX style would be even better. This way I could browse through my list and add all the missing covers in a quicker way instead of browsing, clicking edit, clicking change cover, changing, going back to list looking for my previous position, continuing.
Andi
I like LibraryThing the way it is, and see social software as something different. I use the excellent Stumbleupon site for friends, photos, page recommendations etc. and can easily contact someone in LibraryThing if I want to.
I feel bad posting here because I have an email of yours that's *still* waiting on a reply ;)
But I just wanted to add my two cents, especially as I've been one of the people pushing for more "social" features.
I'd definitely avoid going overboard with user photos. You already support them, they're as prominent as they need to be. I think it's wise to avoid LibraryThing becoming any kind of meat market, even if it *was* a "beautiful people who love books" meat market.
I do want the groups feature. It'd be nice if that's added to also be able to mark a book as being on loan to another member. Then perhaps an interface to request a loan of a book from somebody in one of your groups. Pretty soon you have to start thinking about how one applies to be a member of a group, who authorises it, who is allowed to request a loan from you, etc - the distinction between that level of functionality and "friends" is purely semantic.
I can see why you'd want to avoid the LiveJournal style flow-on effects of friends lists, but there's no reason for "friendship" (or any other social attributes of a user profile) to be prominently displayed.
If you're still planning on adding forum functionality then many of these things may be unavoidable. But I'm very confident that you can manage to pull it off *tastefully*, which will make all the difference ;)
Sorry me again. I'd like to see some kind of bugtracker/featurewishlist where users can submit bugs like this one:
Tagging in the manual bookadding dialog doesn't work. It gives a fatal error. Leaving the tags field empty and updating the book afterwards works.
Tag problem fixed. Thanks.
Oh, please do avoid the "meat market" aspect of social software. I enjoy LibraryThing just the way it is. Tasteful and classy are the way to go in my book (groan, sorry 'bout that pun).
The user photo feature is fine the way it is.
Thanks for all you do!
Yes, I thought it looked different. More brown?
I agree with felius, etc.: as happy as I am to have pictures available (and I did love being the Tenth Muse for a while, before I morphed into myself!), it would be a shame to give them too great a prominence. I think there's no need to change, and any change might well be for the worse.
On friends lists v. watchlist: I rather prefer it as it is. If you do make friends lists, I'd be sorry to see the watchlist disappear. There are people on mine who would probably be surprised, but whose libraries interested me. They're 'go back digging' notes as much as a list of acquaintances or friends. I don't think you're being a stick in the mud. The idea of 'friends' lists gives me eerie forebodings of revenant high school cliques. Yet a subtle, not too highly hyped friends list, in addition to the watchlist, could be nice.
I'm all in favor of LibraryThing's social aspects - I think they're great - but I wouldn't want the focus to slip too far off the books. I'd rather belong to a vast social library than a meatmarket, no matter how many wonderful readers it turned up. :)
On searching by zip code, I'd give it a maybe. It's useful, not public or ego-driven, and not likely to overwhelm anything else.
LibraryThing seems eminently accessible to me. I don't think it should be more so. What you have is excellent, and popularity isn't being penalized. - Whereas more 'accessibility' may only mean compromise and downgrading... There are only so many people who really love reading - and really care about books. I don't know if you can make a much broader accessibility without losing identity.
In a last nod to felius, whatever you choose, I know you'll manage it as tastefully and intelligently as you have done so far. I'm sure we'll be pleased. And I appreciate the ability to communicate, if we're not.
My thanks and my profound appreciation for it all... Congratulations on today's likely book count!
Please, keep everything the way it is now.
I'm one of the people who likes the social aspect and I want more social features, but I don't want a more social LibraryThing in the way you've described here.
Personally I think you should focus on more of the book-related features before you go on to social. That is why most of us are here (I think) and what we want. For example: a more complex sorting method allowing to sort by Author and then Pub date within each author.
Also I would like to see the library card data back in 'card' form as opposed to the marc record. Leave the marc if it is necessary, but I (and maybe others?) prefer the card as easier to interpret.
Also in this view: the LC subjects has said "(Momentarily down; coming back soon with full searchability)" for a while.
Finally: In addition to the page suggestion for known bugs, how about a page showing features 'coming soon' or 'in progress' with an estimated complete date or priority rating?
Sorry for the long post, but I feel the 'Library' side of the site is more important than the 'social'. There are any number of sites I can visit for social reasons but this site is unique and I don't want to see it lost in the shuffle.
Though I'm a big proponent of social software, I don't think it suits as well here. It seems a bit silly. Though, rotating users on the front page could be nice (just no pictures).
Oy. http://www.librarything.com/blog/ still shows the old header background color. FYI
I'm here because I want to catalogue my books. Books and reading are the reason for the site, not meeting a hot date. There are other sites that are geared towards that sort of thing.
The site is tasteful and classy and as someone who's been here since September, I think the tweaks you have made so far have been good, but don't try and turn the site into something it isn't.
Simple, elegant, tasteful. That's what I want in website design. The more clutter, the less inclined I am to spend time at a site.
For me, this site is all (well, mostly) about the books. I do like the "social" aspects, as it relates to shared books. But I see no need to ratchet that up.
...or should LibraryThing try hard NOT to do this?
Yes. LibraryThing should try hard NOT to do this.
I like the new front page look, and like that you're thinking of other ways to improve the outer design.
But please first continue to focus on the BOOKS, rather than the social aspect or the packaging.
Please continue to improve searching, cataloguing, tagging, adding new book related features before you turn to 'sexy social networking' and outward appearance features. :-)
I came for the books--cataloging my own, primarily, and then checking out what other people have--and that is my primary interest. I'd like to see that remain the focus.
LibraryThing should remain primarily about books, not social networking. There are already ten bajillion places on the 'net you can go for social networking.
Yes, the social networking aspects present thus far are lots of fun (being able to search other users libraries, being able to 'chat' and comment on each others libraries, etc.) but...the books themselves are paramount.
I don't like the idea of having users pictures front and center. Where they are now, on a users profile page, is just fine. And a user can 'network' all they want, on their profile page.
The BOOKS should be front and center, as they are now. A new pile of books to check out--now that's way more sexy to me. ;-)
It would be more fun to have rotating piles of books featured than someone's picture. The rotating users libraries feature on the front page is fun too.
I'm not currently using the 'watch' list, but I do like the fact that it is private, and it should remain that way. I don't think this site needs a public 'friends list'.
Thanks!
Librarything, as a social software, is about judging people by their books. Not by their looks. I love it for that. And I want it to stay a home for people who think that a pile of books is as sexy as a hot chick anyway.
Groups are an excellent idea, and so is some kind of site-wide forum area other than this blog, but I don't like the idea of turning the watchlist into a buddy list. Searching by location might not be a bad idea, as long as putting in a location wasn't required.
I think right now, though, Librarything is at just about the right balance point of accessibility, and I'd rather you work on the *important* stuff - the accurate cataloging of books - than anyhing else.
P.S. I love it here! And I'm constantly amazed by how fast it is being developed, too. Thanks.
"What they said."
Please keep the focus on the books, and especially on improving LibraryThing's functionality where the essentials are concerned.
Library basics good: fancy social software features bad!
Incidentally, I don't know what other users look like, and I really would rather NOT know, on the whole (although it can be fun to see what picture each Thinger likes to represent themselves with... a lot of Sapphos out there!).
Where other users are concerned, all I care about is: what do they have in their libraries that I might like, and (sometimes) what do they think of this particular book I've heard so much about - or never heard of at all?
P.S. Your watch list is SO much better than the buddy list/friends list approach. Please keep this as is. Please.
Two features that I'd love to see:
1.) The ability to make certain tags "private". I would like to point my family toward my library, but I don't want them to see -everything- I own (for various reasons which I'm sure you can imagine).
2.) The ability to enable various levels of access to a user's library (a la LiveJournal's "friending" feature, though I hope you stay far away from using such a loaded term if you do decide to implement such a system of filtered access).
Of these two features, the first is far more important to me.
Thanks again for all your hard work
I support the group feature. felius idea (to mark a book as being on loan to another member.) is what my friends and I would also like to see in group feature. Please keep the rest just the way it is. Thanks for considering.
Just to add, I actually wouldn't mind the addition of a "social" aspect to LibraryThing. Just keep the default to "opt out" and people who do want to participate can, while those of us who don't, won't have to.
Definitely keep book cataloging primary, above all other tasks. Social is fine, but LT has plenty of social features already.
Some things I'd like to see:
(1) Ability to list more than 50 books in catalog view - that's pretty restrictive when you've got more than 1000.
(2) Ability to sort on multiple keys in catalog view. (This is one case where a really elegant solution would incorporate the "combined tags" feature and sort accordingly.)
(3) A live search box on every page, with radio buttons for "search this catalog" and "search all catalogs" and "search people" and a link for the advanced search page.
(4) Ability to add custom fields to the "Add Books" page - this might be too hard programming-wise, I don't know.
(5) It would be a huge help if the MARC record was shown at the bottom of the "Edit Books" page - I'm forever switching back and forth or opening an extra window, since a large part of editing involves looking at what's in the MARC record.
(6) I tried the book widget, but the page it takes you to for any given title is virtually empty, since very few books I have are shared with many people and there's hardly ever a cover image. There needs to be clear "catalog card" page for each title, with the social details in fine print below (that would be classy). This individual "catalog card" page could be linked from the catalog view also.
(7) Being able to name the five different catalog views would be very nice. I might like to have one that's author-date, another that is date-author, another that is for editing purposes, another that is by call number, etc. Perhaps a mouse-over display of this name when you pass over the numbers. When other people view my catalog, do they see it the way I've arranged it, or according to their own defaults?
There are plenty of meat markets I can go to see the reinforcement of the gender stereotypes I don't subscribe to. "Becki" is pretty offensive. Can't women do anything without it being seen as a way to find the support of a man? Oh yes, sorry, my entire aim in life is supposed to be to get married and reproduce.
There are plenty of other social sites. Define a LT group on facebook or friendster if that's what you want.
Sorry, well and truly not interested.
I agree with the anonymous above on point no.1.
Also, the new feature "Date read" is really nice, but since I can't remember the exact day in which I've finished a book but just the month and the year, can it be fixed so that it reads the mm/yy format too?
... I repeat what most of the others have said: NO social features!
I'm very much against making LibraryThing into too much of a social site. The site serves the function of allowing users to catalogue their books. That's what it does. It's not a forum or a chatroom or anything like that and if you want to meet up with people and find hotties you can go to myspace.
I do like the extra features, though, like the recommendations based on what books you have. But I much prefer the old look. The new one's so *pink*.
Just to let you know the Javascript widget to display books on website is not working today.
Hmm. I'm also against turning LibraryThing too far in the social direction. There's other sites for that, and most of the time they have a section for books... my MySpace profile links here anyway, and thats as deep an interaction as I think is needed.
That said, I don't have a large enough library or the time for many of the really hardcore cataloguing options. The reason I originally found LibraryThing was because I was uploading to a 'rival' site, whose name I honestly can't even remember anymore, and I came up to a subscription barrier. The terms were unfriendly to say the least but I was hopeful that someone would have a free alternative, or at worst not expensive.
What I was and am really looking for is suggestions for new reading. LibraryThing provides that, but just being presented with a list of books doesn't quite cut it for a picky bugger like me. I'll look at my suggestions sometimes and think, well, I've always irrationally hated that author so I ain't changing now...
Where that point can be defeated, I think, is in discussion with someone who has actually read the book. And here's the point I'm coming round the houses and up and down the alleys to:
I think most of the social questions could be answered with a forum. Entirely opt-in, entirely down to the users to make of it what they well. What LibraryThing has uncovered is a group of people who certainly seem to like books, and I think the only social step necessary is to give those people a place to converse without having to add one another as 'internet buddies'. A forum could breed that familiarity without the hassle and formality that a friends list would have.
I know the facility is there to converse with other users, but to me that seems a little brazen, especially when so many people clearly don't want that level of interaction. A forum where I could say, for example, LibraryThing suggested this but what do you really think of it? and get answers from knowledgable and interested folk would be useful, I think, and sidestep most of the social issues that you seem to be struggling to reconcile.
Anyway. I'm wittering. As ever, thanks for this fine, fine website.
Hi, first of all: this site comes close to what i am looking for and im still trying to work things out.
1.
If you need a new design philosophy why not set up a site with a new batch of requirements? The requirements could then be worked out by "others" so you could just steer it with the top level requirements. Basically: treat it as a software project and present the current list of requirements and the new requirements. Each new wave (e.g. each 3 months) a new set of requirements are being developed. Which are then tested for 2 months whereafter a new version appears. In this way the plan is clear what will change this year and when.
2.
Here are some points for me, i am new so it could be that they are discussed earlier in the blog like the "why there is no discussion forum" (still it would be very handy to have one)
---------
When i add a book i would not like to search Amazon.xx or such since they have no dutch books and i still need to enter a couple of thousand.
I dont want to do this manually, i have no previous list.
I would like to search first through other users books by isbn so at least if I take the effort to enter the book with picture that the next person can immediately add it to his library by using "add books".
if i read this list i think is wish number 1?
-------
2.
My dutch copies of Dan Browns blabla book obviously belong to the same "group" of that book, the only difference is the translation and the printing. I wonder if there could become some kind of grouping between books "related", where users can annotate what the relation is.
It would seem awsome to see all different covers for "da vinci code" from all countries and all printings in one page.
-------
I disagree with the not a forum for every book, i think this is the way forward in web 2.0. I think it should be highly integrateable in e.g. stumbleupon.com etc... I think LibraryThing should in 1 or 2 years be able to be sold as a component which can integrate in other social networks. Which still enables you to focus on books I think web 3.0 is the integration of all social services in 1 connected service.
Ed
http://edelwater.stumbleupon.com/about/
Please no pictures and heavy social emphasis. I agree strongly with felius' remarks and some other comments already posted. I'm here for the books (and cds). I also like the watch feature the way it is. Meanwhile I have a "social" site on MySpace with a link to my books in LibraryThing.
Dragonfly
is it possible to have a place to check when you are currently reading a book. that way someone could see the books you are currently reading, or have just finished reading. or another thing would be a place to check off that you read a book and maybe the month and year you finished reading it. whataya think?
I don't really like the new burt sienna color---it's a bit obtrusive, whereas the previous color was more relaxing.
To me, breige is worse than greige, anyway.
dogzballz
Recently, I've been really into the idea of having something like a forum for every book - I'm thinking something like a slightly expanded version of the reviews that currently exist. In fact, I think that something as simple as adding an option to be notified of new reviews of/comments on books in your library might be all that's needed. (This wouldn't necessarily have to be in the form of individual emails - what about a box on your profile that lists all the books with recently updated discussions? Or...oooh...an RSS feed?) Of course, users with thousands of books might not want to hear about every single one of them, and few people probably want to know about EVERYONE's notes on Harry Potter, but having the option available would allow for discussion and specific questions within the context of the book page (some kind of threading might be useful also). I think this might really contribute to the usefulness of the site - I'm imagining something like a post on a book page asking "What's a good source for a more scholarly analysis of the issues discussed in Chapter 8?" I'd imagine edition disambiguation would be necessary for this. I'm also in favor of searching by zipcode - you could have LibraryThing book clubs popping up all over the place!
PLEASE, keep the basic concept of LibraryThing as is.....it's wonderful to compare libraries, because you may find a book you didn't know about on one of your favorite subjects in someone else's catalog. ANd if you want to engage in some dialog with another user, you can if both are willing. But there are enough sites out there for people who are looking for social connections. Isn't it obvious that LibraryThing has a successful design already? Don't change its focus by adding too many social features.
Call me crazy, but the "greige" was much more pleasing to my eyes than this pink/brown/sienn stuff that's going on now.
On the plus side, this blog entry actually set me to wondering whether there was a word "greige". (As opposed to the clever portmanteau word that your correspondent derived from "grey-beige", that is.)
And yes! There is a greige!
GREIGE: Not bleached or dyed; unfinished. Used of textiles.
And, for bonus points: I also discovered that it's a commonly used term within the hospitality-fabric industry. Doesn't that sound friendly-like?
chamekke,
supporter of "greige"
actually, after a while the change started to grow on me and I finally noticed that the new color scheme complemented the new book pile.
My understanding is that Tim intends to change the banner and picture from time to time. I'm looking forward to this.
Greige is a word! Amazing!
As far as changes in the social aspects, please keep them firmly rooted in the books.
Please do not turn the watch list into a "buddy" list. I am happy with that feature as it is. As for user pictures, i did like the array of provided pictures, as well as the fact you made it easy to add one of my own. Thank you.
I do like the idea of "club" pages, and would love to be able to say, put my resources together with other costumers or cooks.
I like the watch list and would prefer it to a buddy list. Although I have a problem where I can't remove a user from my list ( they have been deleted). Is there any way that I can remove them that I'm missing??
I recently came across your post and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that it caught my interest and you've provided informative points. I will visit this blog often.
Thank you,
Elden
Small Business Loans
Post a Comment
<< Home