Convenience trumps quality

Another conference I was at last week was the JISC/CNI Meeting 2008 in Belfast "Transforming the User Experience". Again more on this soon - I've had too many interesting events recently to digest and write them up.

One strong strand that came out at JISC/CNI was that university libraries spend a huge amount on electronic library resources, and have online catalogues and search systems for all of those resources - but people don't use them. What do people use? Google. Maybe Google Scholar.

This is a real shame, as there are lots of high quality resources out there locked behind the subscription wall which Google doesn't see - but it seems universal. One speaker said "even the academics who complain of students using Google admit when pressed that they rely on it themselves!"

Why? It's just human nature. As another speaker said "convenience trumps quality. Every time. So we have to make quality convenient"

How do you make things convenient? Simple and Quick are good places to start. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don't expose too many options, bells & whistles by default.