King County Library System Website Design

 

BACKGROUND

Winning the title for Library of the Year in 2011, King County Library System is one of the busiest and best library systems in the country, boasting over 10.3 million patron visits to 46 libraries in 2011. Naturally, FGI was thrilled when KCLS came to us for a complete website redesign and development and we were eager to begin the mighty task ahead.

 

PROBLEM

KCLS’s was lacking a dynamic, interactive, intuitive and patron-oriented KCLS catalog. They needed updated designs and features that enabled ease of navigation and supported patron confidence and self-reliance.

 

SOLUTION

FGI’s redesign and development for KCLS included full information architecture overhaul and user testing to determine specific design and usability framework. Following this first phase, a full website redesign and development of the entire site ensued, fitting the new design into the Evergreen open source OPAC. Complex JavaScript was then employed to pull the Evergreen application programming interface. Meanwhile, FGI concurrently developed both a mobile version of the site, a subversion build-out, and continues to work with KCLS on ongoing consulting projects.