In autumn of 1999, librarians at Appalachian State University and Georgia Southern University had decided to revise their Web sites. Each institution's site had been in place for more than a year, and experience with library users had shown that there were certain aspects of the sites' designs that were confusing. Previous efforts to improve these library sites had involved the pooling of criticisms from the librarians and users, and then a small group of library faculty and staff would attempt to create new designs that avoided the weaknesses of the old designs.