Design is everywhere!
Once you start thinking about design and usability they start to haunt you everywhere you go. Here in Portland we’ve been having Arctic Blast 2008!*
This got me thinking that I’d really like to have a pair of moonboots. Moonboots are what I grew up calling those 
non-sport snow boots. Kinda like puffy nylon Uggs?
Anyway, first I went over to the Joe’s Sports website (Joe’s is cheap and near my house). I was trying to sort out how best to find these boots, and I was thinking for some reason that moon boot was a phrase my mom invented. So I typed in something like snow boots and Joe’s showed me some Asic running shoes, a bunch of snow tubes and toboggans, and some sidenav with different categories. I decided that the Joes site is possibly designed with browsing/categories in mind, so I tried a different tact. I searched for snow and then clicked the footwear category, thinking it would sort my results that way.
There are the Asic running shoes again. Hrm, weird. This time I tried using the topnav to go to Apparel & Footwear, thinking that I’d just try to find the coldweather footwear somehow. I found the Asics. After squinting at the screen for a bit I noticed that the Asic running shoe is a featured item and shows on every footwear-related results page. Ohh. Well that was confusing. I scan the categories of footwear but see absolutely nothing that looks like it would keep my feet warm or dry. At this point I’ve been at this for 5-7 minutes and I’ve given this way longer than seems reasonable.
I go to visit the fine folks at Columbia Sportswear (we have an outlet here!) and am greeted on the homepage by some “human element” photos and some topnav. I choose footwear and am automagically whizzed off to a page with—oh my stars—pictures of really awesome-looking snow boots. My options, according to the helpful text and images, are to see the coldweather footwear for chicks, dudes, and crumbsnatchers. Why wouldn’t you highlight the coldweather shoes? It’s freakin winter!
This is awesome. This is what needs to happen to help me find what I’m looking for and it didn’t really take a lot, on the surface, to get it to me. Sure it takes a fair amount of design and user interface construction but as the end user it required absolutely nothing of me—and that’s what most consumers (of information, footwear, groceries, whatever) want of the experience.
You know where this is going, you have to. What is your online experience offering your end user? 
Are you a Columbia or a Joe’s Sports? If you’re not sure, you might want to take some time exploring the idea. What are the experiences you have in the “real world” that cause you to reflect on the library experience? I have some other thoughts involving our campus cafeterias…more on that later. Those snowboots from Columbia are awesome, but I’m stuck on this moon boot thing, so I’m off to do more searching… Oh, these are cool.
*The local hysteria involving weather incidents is ridiculous. The local news folks have hijacked all of the airways and are playing endless coverage of what they call Arctic Blast 2008! We’re talking about a week of snow, folks. I’m thinking there are people who endure this all winter long, without too much trouble.