Having conducted some research at the Robert Gordons University library at Garthdee yesterday I found that my initial direction of designing something for people to carry books with was probably not the best idea… People in universities carry around rather large bags and very few people were actually carrying books, I only recall seeing one guy carrying just the two books. More people were seen carrying coffee cups but most of all sheets of paper! Quite a few people would wonder around with loose sheets of paper in their hands so I have decided that this could be one of my potential areas for creating a product. Perhaps something you pick up from just next to the printer that just hold all your work together – could be a good product for marketing because it is visible as people are wondering around.
I spoke to one guy who made an interesting comment, he said he thinks the role of libraries are changing… “I study at home and use the library to socialise”… I found this interesting considering libraries are associated with dead silence and well.., researching, reading books and swotting up. As I was people watching in the library I did find that this was quite accurate, although people were still working they were working in groups, chatting away and helping each other. It was a very relaxed scene with people listening to iPods, sitting with food and drinks next to them and snacking in front of their laptops. Although I found this interesting, I have not thought of anyway of applying this information to Harveys…
The final thing I noticed: I found that it is very hard to get journals out of the boxes they are stored in. Harveys refer to them as ‘slip cases’ on their website. The reason it is hard to get the journals out is because of the size of the shelves. The journals (which are more delicate and capable of damage than books) must be bent to remove them without removing the slip case from the shelf. I took note of a couple people who used different techniques for searching through the journals in the boxes. They both had to take all the journals in the box out to flick through them, this is because journals have such thin spines that do not hold information on them so the consumer must flick through them out from the box. I am thinking my current direction will be designing a product that makes it easier to remove journals from their boxes (preventing them from damage) and/or easier to search through journals without removing them from their slip cases.
LJ design 