Website
The Boston Public Library, established in 1848, was the first large free municipal library in the United States. It was also the first library system to establish branches to serve their community. As of today, it has 26 branches throughout the city of Boston. After 175 years of serving the public, this public library system has seen many revisions throughout its years.
The Boston Public Library’s homepage (Boston Public Library (bpl.org)) seems clear and concise. At the top of the page, there are drop downs to guide me to different areas of the library. However, looking below those banners, there are two sections labeled, “Featured” and “Featured Events”. When chosen, each featured item took me to a dedicated webpage pertaining to that feature. I noticed that the targeted webpages did not always have the same titles as they did on the homepage’s “Featured” posting. This is a violation of the heuristic of consistency and standards because it could confuse users into thinking they are looking at the incorrect information. Confusion could be avoided if the titles of the features matched exactly the title of the webpage titles.
Evaluation
The focus of this evaluation is searching for available English-speaking classes in the Boston Public Library system. My approach for this evaluation was to see if there was a straight-forward way to obtain where in the Boston area I could take English-speaking classes. I started by moving through the dropdown menus on the homepage and noticed “classes” was located under the services dropdown. However, when I clicked on it, I was taken to the “Events” main page. Although classes can be considered events, it is not clear because classes were listed under the “Services” dropdown instead of the “Events” dropdown. This violates the heuristic of flexibility and efficiency of use because inexperienced users would be confused by accessing classes from two different paths. Under the “Services” dropdown, finding classes is a direct link, while under the “Events” main page, I had to additionally choose the “Workshops & Classes” filter. Even more confusing is under the “Events” dropdown, there is no mention of classes or workshop.
Once filtered down to just workshops and classes, there is no additional search for a specific class that someone may want. There were 287 items under workshops and classes which resulted in 15 pages to search through. I then took a different approach and used the main search bar which is present on every page. I chose events in the dropdown and when I typed in “English speaking classes” the results revealed ESOL classes, which stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages. Despite the abbreviation being described below the description of each event, the audience may not know what it means at first. This also violates consistency and standards because it is showing the abbreviations that users may not know until they open the page. It would be more informative if the abbreviation and its meaning were placed closer to each other.
All ESOL classes were listed in the results in chronological order. Some of the classes gave information on whether registration was full or required, while other classes did not have any information on how to register for them. This a violation of the help and documentation heuristic. Clicking on a class that did not have any information on registration will not tell the user how they can attend the class or any other information other than the date and the time. Every class available show information on how to participate. If registration for a class would be available at a future date, it should at minimum inform the user “Registration coming soon”.
Filters, located on the left side of the events page, can be used to further narrow the particular location and audience (by age). It would be more advantageous if there was a filter for the knowledge level of those wanting to learn English. For example: beginner, intermediate, conversational, etc. This would make the website comply more with the heuristic of flexibility and efficiency of use.
I additionally put “ESOL” in the event search tool and it resulted in the same list of classes. But there was a new “Computer/Technology Classes” event type filter to choose from. These classes were for non-English speakers and focused on strengthening their technology skills, which is unrelated to learning English. This violates the consistency and standards heuristic because English speaking classes specifically use the acronym ESOL, but the search results are different. ESOL is a broader search encompassing more than just English-speaking classes.
Analysis
One main flaw that I realized when searching for English-speaking classes is that the results are given in the English language. A suggestion would be to allow users of the website to choose an alternate language, especially since they may not read or understand much English. Another suggestion would be to create a separate section for classes only and not group them in with events. This would be a direct way for any user to find what courses are offered.
The Boston Public Library has proven itself a memorable and useful library, but its website still suffers from some of the issues that other libraries have with their own websites. It appears to be more focused towards patrons who have used their libraries before instead of new members. It needs to find a correct balance between assisting new users and old users.