Library science tradition

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a meeting where somebody describes the user behavior they’ve been observing, and I get to say, “Oh, berrypicking,” or “Oh, Granovetter’s strength of weak ties,” and it is relatively unusual that anybody else knows what I’m talking about, unless there’s somebody else with library training in the room. That kind of collective memory, that awareness that patterns of user behavior are older, deeper, and more pervasive than a single website, a single experience, are really vital to designing good experiences, and something the field is lacking.