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UX “don’ts” we still need from Erika Hall

The second edition of Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research dropped October 2019; although this excellent volume was previously unknown to me I am taking the opportunity now to consume, embody, and evangelize Hall’s approach to user research. Or, as Hall might put it, I’m a willing convert to the gospel of “Enoughening”. Hall is a seasoned design consultant and co-founder of Mule Design Studio but her commercial approach is tempered by a no-nonsense attitude that makes her solutions and suggestions palatable to a small UX team such as my own at Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. Rather than conduct a formulaic book review of Just Enough Research, I want to highlight some specific things Hall tells the reader not to do in their UX research. This list of five “don’ts” summarize Hall’s tone, style, and approach. It will also highlight the thesis of the second edition’s brand new chapter on surveys….

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UX? What About EX? Exploring Employee Experience Design for Libraries

Image of library service point

User experience (UX) design has a solid foundation in the consciousness of libraries. At last year’s LITA Forum there were three sessions with “UX” in the title, one for each day of the conference. UX design has made libraries more—to use Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etche’s phrase—useful, usable, and desirable for users. However, as an application specialist I primarily work with staff that run the daily operations of our library systems, such as our integrated library system and interlibrary loan applications. I wondered how the insights of user experience design for front-end users could be applied to back-end users to help me do my job. How could I make working with library systems less frustrating for staff, to help them better serve our users? “…creating better experiences for staff is a win-win: improving EX improves employees’ ability to serve users.” While I found an abundance of library-specific literature on user…

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A Chinese and American librarian talk user research and intellectual property

students studying in the library

In April 2018, I traveled to China and presented research on user research and information literacy at the Beijing Normal University (BNU) and the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing. Both universities have relationships with the University of Montana, and ours was one of many diplomatic/academic trips that zig-zag across the Pacific Ocean. In Beijing, I presented a paper that connected my teaching with my experience doing user research, particularly usability testing of the library website at the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library, where I am based. My interpreter while at BNU, Ran, has been an instruction librarian there for ten years, during which the library has never used user research or UX methodologies to inform any of its decision-making. This difference of experience between us and our institutions fostered fascinating and enlightening conversations. “In China, most librarians want to lead (or guide) students’ behavior but not…

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IA & UX Meet Library Technology

The class I enjoy the most this semester at Indiana University is Information Architecture. It is a class where theory and practical application are blended so that we can create something tangible, but also understand the approaches – my favorite kind! As usability.gov defines it, Information Architecture (IA) “focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way.” While the class doesn’t necessarily focus on Library Science since it is offered through the Information Science courses, this concept may sound a bit familiar to those working in a library. In the class, we have chosen a small website we believe could benefit from restructuring. Some students chose public library websites, and others websites from the private sector. Regardless of each website’s purpose, the process of restructuring is the same. The emphasis is placed on usability and user experience (UX), which the ALA Reference and User Services Association defines as “employing user…