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65 of 365: A library design problem solved, perhaps.

nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

I was alerted to Toby Greenwalt’s great blog theanalogdivide by Sophie Brookover of Library Link NJ, in which Toby just proposed a series of design problems as they relate to libraries. I love a good design problem. Here he introduces the first problem, and below I answer it in my own way.

“Your first challenge? Create a online library card signup.   You could say that signing up for a library card is our equivalent of what websites refer to as onboarding – the process with which a user becomes part of that site. Sites invest significant work-hours and enormous sums of money to make this process as appealing as possible?

Libraries? Not so much. Whether through requiring in-person visits, confusing policy, or resorting to PDFs, libraries tend to get in their own way when it comes to attracting new users. We can do better than this. I’d like to use this inaugural Challenge to prove it.

Your criteria:

  • Design a workflow that a hypothetical user would use to sign up for your hypothetical library. You’ll need to use this design to address the issue of proving residency.
  • If there’s a policy that needs to be set in order to make your design work, you’ll need to explain that policy.
  • Any medium is OK. Pencil-and-paper. Google Form. Flowchart. Photoshop mockup. Working prototype.
  • If you draw inspiration from somewhere, cite your sources. I’d love to hear a bit about your process.
  • You must have your design published by Monday, May 5th. Remember to email me (toby at theanalogdivide dot com) with the link. If you don’t have your own web space, feel free to send me the design and I’ll publish it here.”

~ theanalogdivide » Blog Archive » The Librarian Design Challenge –

So my answer is as follows:

  1. Advertise a shortened URL (via whatever advertising channels you wish) to a Google Form in which you allow a new patron to fill out a form. Form logic should require all required fields, such as full name, address, email, and phone number, etc. If payment is required, payment information can also be collected, but should occur later in the process, after address is verified.
  2. As you may or may not know, all google forms publish results to a spreadsheet, which can be exported to a CSV for use in a mail merge.
  3. Daily or weekly, a mail merge can be used to create mailable postcards with a unique code (autogenerated) that is sent to the address of the new patron.
  4. A patron who receives the postcard at the indicated address will submit the code and payment information to a second URL (encrypted) if any payment is required. The code validation reasonably proves residence to the degree that this is possible through electronic means.
  5. Upon code submission and or payment processing, the patron’s new card is mailed out, or made available for pickup, depending on the patron’s preference.

This mimics Google’s own location verification process for business registration listing in Google Places service https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en&visit_id=637299706572194876-2550561397&rd=1).

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On the importance of a great Calendar: Work/Life balance and management at LeMasney Consulting

51 of 365 on meeting management by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
51 of 365 on meeting management by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
51 of 365 on meeting management by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
51 of 365 on meeting management by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

On the importance of the Calendar in my work.

After a recent conversation with a client in which we were discussing appointment finalization, we discussed how I kept track of my meetings. It made me realize that my workflow for meeting management might make for an interesting template for others. I had another friend ask me what it was that allowed me to manage my work best. I replied without thinking that if something exists on my calendar, it’s real. Otherwise, it’s just an idea.

In that light, here is the way that my calendaring works:

  1. I use Google Calendar as the basis for everything. Because both my personal account and my business account both are Google based, it makes sense that I use the various tools there, including, drive, music, photos, contacts, Gmail and calendar. http://calendar.google.com
  2. Because Google understands my contacts in context, it makes it especially easy to add people and places to the meetings.  I am sure to add geolocation data when I enter business cards and contact info into contacts. When I start to type a client’s name in my location field in Calendar, it autocompletes with their location if present in contacts. http://contacts.google.com
  3. I use a Gmail feature that makes recognizable dates and times in my email into links that create new events in Calendar. http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et_mailtoevent.htm
  4. I use Rapportive to give me socially-contextual information in my right sidebar. https://rapportive.com/
  5. I use Doodle.com. Doodle is best known for its service for letting multiple people arrange their meeting time. However, they have a less known feature called “Meet Me” pages, where you get your own Doodle URL that people can go to and choose an open spot (all busy times show as simply busy) on my Google Calendar. Meanwhile, I do not have to go through the relatively restrictive controls on sharing my Google Calendar with someone without a Google account, or with one I don’t know. Also, I do not have to make my calendar public. Doodle sends me a notification, and I confirm. Doodle updates my calendar, and syncs changes I make from Calendar.  The openness of Google Calendar’s APIs allows Doodle to make a better tool. http://doodle.com/lemasney
  6. I use If This Then That (IFTTT, pronounced ‘ifft’) in order to add certain social activities to my calendar. IFTTT takes the response from one service, and outputs it to another service. In particular, I have a calendar that just shows scrobbling (a log of what I listen to on my devices) from last.fm, and I add checkins (places I visit and geotag) from foursquare to my meetings calendar. http://ifttt.com
  7. Finally, I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but I also enjoy both chocolate and peanut butter. With Google Calendar, I have multiple account calendars. One for public meetings, one for my time with my boys, and one for my personal meetings. I have a second account on Google that has its own calendar. You’d never know I have all of those calendars, because they all appear on one Calendar, with custom colors to differentiate them. Within Google Calendar, you can either create a new calendar, subscribe to another Google Calendar user, or subscribe by ICS to anyone using a standards based Calendar. This is one of the reasons I love open standards.
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Google Analytics and targeted campaigns.

open_waveform by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
open_waveform by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Hi, all! This week, I have some interesting projects going on, and I wanted to share them with you and invite you to join me.

On Monday, July 22nd (and 29th), 2013, I’ll be starting a two part class on Google Analytics at Princeton Public Library. This is my first opportunity to talk publicly about the power of GA, and I’m really excited. This series will be focused on getting started for beginners, but if you are like me you know that even seasoned experts learn something new in a beginner’s class, so please come out and join us from 7-8:30 in the Tech Center at PPL.

Google Analytics v2.0
Google Analytics v2.0 (Photo credit: vrypan)

Google Analytics is an insight engine. By adding a little bit of javascript to each of your pages in your site, you tell Google to track activity on your site that can lead to insights about your content. Because you can learn where your audience is viewing your content from, you can tell if you need to focus more on local content or remote content. Because you can tell what your most popular content is, you can focus on the issues that matter to your audience most. Because you can track which pages are being visited specifically, you can learn how effective a particular link or advertisement is or not. These are just a few of the things that you can do with Analytics, but over the next two weeks we will learn many more.

I’m using Analytics in work with a client right now in order to tell if a particular ad campaign is effective or not so that they can focus their money and energy in the most productive way.  If we are using two different methods or advertising channels to get people to take the same action, let’s say to click a link or watch a video, we can tell easily after a week of clicks which method was more effective and by how much. We could also look at visits in two comparative time periods to see if one method was more or less effective than another during a particular month or season. Outdoor advertising might not work as well as other methods during a very cold winter month, for example. With Analytics, we don’t have to guess or assume that to be true, we could deduct that from the data.

If this is interesting to you, please consider yourself invited! If you’d like to see what other classes and content I like to teach, or if you’d like to have me come to your organization to speak or consult, please visit the Presentations and Topics page.

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After lunch walk on 20120517

This is a typical after lunch walk from Frist to Lewis Library. Lots of steps, good people watching, and beautiful on a nice day.

[googlemaps

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Talk: Princeton Newcomers: On the Future of Mobile Computing

Nowhere by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org
Nowhere by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

On May 17th at 10 a.m. I gave a talk to the Princeton YWCA Newcomers about the future of mobile computing.

Here is the writeup:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1lY5cnJqAGtwT3PUOBJYn15SZ_XjtocdPjE_bqFTxs_U

Here are the slides:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMjI0ZHp0azdoZGg&hl=en

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BCUG: Inkscape and Sketchup

Hello, sugar. by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org
Hello, sugar. by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

Event: Brookdale Computer Users Group design SIG monthly meeting

Date: April, 2011

Venue: Monmouth Mall meeting space

Abstract: In this session, I gave an overview and demo of the open source vector design application known as Inkscape, followed by a brief exercise in the free 3d modeling tool from Google called Sketchup. .

Commentary and notes: