The first Ex Libris User Interface Seminar with ICAU took place in November 2001 in Hamburg, Germany. The main task of the seminar was to establish an organizational and methodological framework for a long term process of development collaboration concerning the new client interface. The whole process of the new client interface development should take about 12 – 18 months for all modules.
The seminar was prepared by Ezra Schwartz, the interface designer of Ex Libris USA, and the ICAU Steering Comittee. At the beginning Ezra and seven ICAU Module Coordinators made up for the Focus Group; meanwhile all ICAU Module Coordinators and one member of NAAUG take part in the work of the group.
Discussions during the first seminar concerned general matters of client interface and, in particular, the methodology developed by Ezra Schwartz to analyze the various workflows in Aleph. This methodology was used to analyze a number of work flows in all Aleph modules; methodology parameters were refined during and after the seminar.
Starting from 2002 the Module Coordinators have elaborated the relevant task lists for each module and provided the task analysis of basic functionalities of all modules for large academic libraries. Meanwhile about 100 work flows are stored in the database.
The workflow analysis was used since as a common and transparent basis for discussions between users and Ezra as the interface designer on one hand and between the interface designer and the system developers on the other. The clear and comparable analysis of the workflows was an important basis for the Reverse Engineering of the client interface through the development.
The second meeting of the Focus Group took place in April 2002 on Cyprus following the System Seminar. The main issue of the meeting was the presentation of the new Circulation client interface and the focus group feedback.
Starting May 2002 detailed testing and evaluation of the new Circulation client and feedback to the development took place. The new prototype of the client interface based on version 15 was presented during the ICAU meeting in Paris, where the third meeting of the Focus group took place. Main issues were the discussion of the comments of the Focus group from the feedback database concerning the Circulation module. The second topic was the discussion of improvements for the interface of the Acquisition, Cataloging and Serials modules based on the presented mockups.
The 4th face to face meeting of the Focus Group took place on March 3rd – 5th, 2003 in the office of Ex Libris Germany in Hamburg. Discussing many topics on the “still hot” version 16 of Aleph again many important comments and recommendations concerning the workflows in Aleph made by the group will significantly improve the usability of the new client interface.
The process of the new client interface development started 2001 with circulation – in version 16 all moduls except for ILL will already have a “new face”.
2004 Ex Libris kindly agreed to continue with the collaboration on the further development of new client interface. The ICAU Modul Coordinators collected and the international user community evaluated more than 50 suggestions for further workflow improvements and submitted these to Ex Libris. During the system seminar 2005 in Kos there were several face to face meetings of the focus group wit Judy Levi and Omri Gerson. In a very productive way all suggestions were considered and most of them were identified as functionality and/or workflow issues that need dealing with and Ex Libris expressed the willingness to consider appropriate solutions apart of the standard request procedure. Meanwhile several of the most crucial issues were solved and will be implemented in version 18 of ALEPH500, some of them are already downgraded to version 16.
This interactive process between system development and user feedback is an excellent way to develop a client interface that closely meets users’ needs. We understand the collaboration of the Focus Group with Ex Libris therefore as a first step towards a long term cooperation between Ex Libris and ICAU in the process of system development.
