No, that's not a typo. It's Juck -- as in luck.
Not something more common like Jack or Chuck or Rob.
As befits his name, Juck is a little unconventional. Five years ago, working on client/server systems in his native England, Juck met his future American bride on the Internet. They traveled worldwide for a year "until we ran out of money" and landed in Indiana. A storybook romance.
He eventually joined INCOLSA (Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority) as manager for their new Inspire project -- a program to provide database access to any computer with Internet access in the state of Indiana.
Today Juck is excited about still another adventure. Later this month, he will be leading a safari of sorts when Inspire unveils its new custom interface for children: Inspire for Kids. (The graphics above were taken from the interface. The animated graphic is the Inspire logo).
"We heard from children's librarians shortly after we launched Inspire in January of 1998. They thought the regular interface was too difficult for children to use," he recalls. Inspire did offer access to a children's interface from EBSCO -- the only vendor Inspire used at the time -- but librarians were not satisfied with that design either. So they decided to make their own.
Ian McKinney was one of those who asked for more. McKinney, youth librarian with the Tippecanoe Public Library, had never worked on design projects before. Most librarians never do. But he knew that INCOLSA had asked for librarians' input with the first Inspire interface. So he emailed Juck about the possibility of developing a new interface.
"Kids aren't as sophisticated users of information as the general public. . . . To them, 'history' is a course they take in school. . . . We wanted an interface that was more obvious to use," he said.
Inspire put the requests on hold. And later in the year, Juck found some luck. He had funds remaining from the Lilly Endowment that he needed to use before the grant expired. He dashed off an email to the INCOLSA listserv looking for volunteers to participate in a roundtable discussion.
The response was very strong, and Juck had to limit participation to eight. They gathered at INCOLSA in December as a kind of focus group to consider what makes a good interface work.
"Juck was great," Ian remembers. "He pulled us back from deep philosophical discussions and got us to focus on function."
Working from the Inspire interface -- based on OCLC's Out-of-the-Box interface (OBI) -- the librarians simplified, amplified and removed features item by item.
They asked for simpler language and explicit directions. They wanted basic keyword searching as the default on the opening screen, while keeping advanced searching available for older kids, librarians and teachers. And they wanted icons. They thought that the current interface was complicated with text. Adding meaningful icons would help direct actions. The safari theme came later. "I think we said something about animals," Ian remembers.
Juck handed the suggestions over to Mary Elise Haug, Inspire's system administrator.
Mary Elise basically reworked the QuickSearch screen in the OBI to incorporate the specifications laid out by the librarians. She removed the database list from the front page, added style sheets, extended formatting classes to return graphics and changed the layout of the results screen. She originally tried to create a non-frames version, but ran into a series of glitches, and settled on a simple frames interface.
Working part-time, she had a functioning prototype ready in a few weeks.
At this point she was just waiting for the graphics, which INCOLSA outsourced to a graphic design studio. "If the graphics are not the right images, people won't respond," Mary Elise commented.
The graphic artists developed the safari theme based on conversations with INCOLSA. "We had to reel them in a bit, though," Juck admits. The realities of Java technology and speedy document delivery limited the scope of the jungle the designers had envisioned.
Still, the looks have received plaudits. It was well-received by librarians at a state conference earlier this spring. Currently they are testing the interface at selected libraries for fine tuning.
INCOLSA plans to release the final version later this month. A demo is currently not available.
To contact Juck Lowe: jlowe@incolsa.palni.edu
To contact Mary Elise Haug: mehaug@incolsa.palni.edu
