Which design is better? It depends!

As the weather in the New England gets colder, we've been spending more week nights at the town's library. My favorite section of the library is the northeast side of the second floor filled with books on homemaking, art, and career. As a frequent visitor, I'm hardly surprised by the surroundings here. But I was the other night.

As I was walking down the aisle, I noticed a couple of unusual signs on the side of one book shelve (Figure 1). They were eye-catching because  they had pictures in them in addition to the expected book section numbers. (First time in my life had ever noticed a picture on the side of a library book shelve!  Anyone else in the same boat?) One picture had a puppy and a cat in it pointing out the Pets Section. Another showed a pot of boiling spaghetti for Cooking, obviously. And finally, the last one was a clipart with a man and a woman in power suits hinting at the Career & Business Section. 

Figure 1. A couple unusual signs at the Morse Library. Notice the pictures and big font. 

Figure 2. Regular book shelve signs at Morse Library. Nothing surprising.

To give you a sense of how prominently these picture-enhanced signs stood out, compare them with a regular sign below. Between the two flavors, three differences were obvious:

• New signs had pictures. Regular signs had none.
• New signs had section names. Regular signs did not.
• New signs showed section numbers in a huge font. Regular signs' numbers appeared tiny in comparison.

Now the question was: why? (And notice the effort to hide the shiny surface that appeared to be part of a tablet in between the new signs.) But I'm not going into that because as much as I want to speculate, I haven't done any investigations and has nothing to back up any hypothesis I may have.

Instead, as someone who's constantly tuned into anything that may trigger interesting human behaviors, I  would ask the question: Which design is more usable? My invariable answer to this question has been and will probably always be: It depends.  To illustrate why, consider the following scenarios.

Scenario 1: Frequenter. Exploring.

Jen is a foodie and an avid cook. Her enjoys trying out new eateries around town and making delicious dishes for her friends and family. Her local library is her source of inspiration for fancy dishes. She recently finished the Little Paris Kitchen cookbook by Rachel Khoo she got from the library. Today, she's returning for a new cookbook. She doesn't have a specific book in mind. She's in the mood of exploring and letting serendipity bring her something fun to check out. As a frequenter to the library, Rachel goes straight for the shelves with cookbooks that she remembers from numerous previous visits. She does not bother to look at the signs on the bookshelves. She knows where she wants to go by heart.

Scenario 2: First-timer. Locating a book.

Aiden is new to town. He has signed up for a pass at the local library a few weeks ago but hasn't got a chance to leverage it.

During a recent weekend visit to NYC, Aiden enjoyed an amazing dinner at the famous MOMOFUKU restaurant by celebrity chef David Chan. The sticky rice with spicy sausage was so good that he wants to create it on his own. He remembers that David Chan has written a cookbook on the dishes served at his restaurant. When Aiden got home, he looks up "David Chan" in the library's online catalog. The MOMOFUKU cookbook came up. Excited, he writes down the call number and heads to the library.

As a fresh visitor to the library, Aiden asks for help locating the floor section. A librarian directs him to the section. There, he starts looking for the matching shelve number.  He immediately notices the huge shelf number and the picture of the boiling pasta. He checks the shelf number above it to see if that matches his. It didn't. He continues to the next shelf and did the same thing. This time, it did. He heads down that shelf and finds the cookbook.

Which is design better? It depends.

The signs did not help Jen. She walked past them as she did not need them. She was familiar with the library section and was just browsing around.

The signs were helpful to Aiden in the beginning. The huge shelf numbers and the pasta picture immediately grasped his attention.  But eventually, he relied on the numbers, not the picture, to locate his book as the cooking section spanned multiple shelves.

In summary, to determine how good a design is, it really depends on who the users are, what their goals are, and what they already know. Graphics and pictures are often considered more "user friendly" than text however, that is not necessarily so. If they do not serve users' goals well, they are of little to no value.