What Do Users Want from Our Website?
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In 2015 the UC San Diego Library conducted a user study of the Library’s website. The broad purpose of this study was to determine what faculty and students want to have on a library home page to facilitate their research journey, and to what extent our current home page meets their needs. The results of the study are intended to help us make incremental improvements to our current home page, as well as inform our upcoming website redesign process.
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What Do Users Want from Our Website?
- 1. What Do Users Want from Our Website? A User Study of the UC San Diego Library Website SuHui (Sue) Ho Digital User Experience Librarian
- 2. Agenda • Discussion of our study • Methodologies • Process – how I did it • Research findings • What I learned – UX culture and stakeholder buy-ins
- 3. UC San Diego • Large public research university • One of the UCs • Student population: 30,000 Image credit: Łukasz Lech
- 4. The Library • One library • Centralized – Academic Services – Collection Services – Enterprise Services Image credit: http://ucpa.ucsd.edu/ & marshillonline
- 5. My Position • New position • Expert in UX • Main UX researcher Academic Services Digital User Services Director Web Managing Editor Digital User Experience Librarian
- 6. Purpose of Study • Library research process • Website goals • Website tasks • Navigation and information architecture • Content and terminology
- 8. Methodologies • Interview • “XO” exercise of navigational menus • Participatory design - draw their ideal library home page
- 9. Interview • Major/Subject Discipline/Level • Information research process • What do you usually do on the library’s website?
- 10. XO Exercise • Homepage and Menus
- 11. Follow-up Questions • Likes • Dislikes • Confusions • Suggestions • Participatory design – design an ideal website for yourself
- 12. Recruitment • Homepage carousel • Eye-catching • Incentive $20 • Students within a week • Faculty – 1 responded and 2 via liaisons
- 13. Demographics • 10 users – 4 Undergrads – 3 Grads – 3 Faculty
- 14. Scheduling • LibCal My Scheduler • Choose a time within 2 weeks
- 15. Automatic Confirmation • Hi Joe, This email confirms your appointment: When: 1:00pm Friday, February 27, 2015 Geisel Library Usability Lab With: Suhui Ho (suhui@ucsd.edu) The Usability Lab is on Geisel Library’s 2nd floor. To reach the room, turn left when you enter Geisel Library and proceed to the west wing toward the Research Assistance Desk. A librarian will meet you at the desk. If you should have any difficulty, you can ask at any service desk for assistance. I look forward to seeing you. Many thanks. To cancel this appointment visit: http://ucsd.libcal.com/cancel_app.php?i=108876&c=6b71879f8e2e648a7c6 1ae929189afb3 • SuHui Ho, Digital User Experience Librarian 858-xxx-xxxx
- 18. Data Analysis • Collect and organize the data
- 20. UX Findings • The library website is a tool for me – Utilitarian – Simple – Task oriented
- 21. UX Findings • Top Tasks – Catalogs – Off-Campus Access – Reserves – e-Journals – My Library Account – Databases A-Z – Hours – Reserve a Study Room Resources Study Space
- 22. UX Findings • User needs differ according to – Discipline – Level of scholarship • Audience navigation
- 23. UX Findings • Common practice among all levels: – Known item searching – Easy access to catalog and e-journals – Easy access to a few good databases
- 24. UX Findings • Everyone (including faculty) wants to search!
- 25. UX Findings • They want to Explore
- 26. UX Findings • They want Help • Terminology • Placement
- 27. UX Findings • Menu items got little to no use:
- 28. What I learned & Tips • Planning • UX Culture – Not just usability tests – Guidance & education – Stakeholder buy-ins • Collaboration
- 29. What I learned & Tips • Look for quick wins – Guerrilla style UX – Tech tools
Editor's Notes
- In 2015 we did a study of our website in preparing for a website redesign. In this presentation I will discuss our user study and methodologies, our workflow, some of the research findings, and discuss what I learned along the way and offer some tips to get stakeholder buy-ins.
- 10 UCs
- This is the Geisel Library. It is named after Theodor Geisel, also called Dr. Seuss. You can see here the cat in the hat and Mr. Geisel in this statue. A few years ago we merged 8 branch libraries into one central library and made many organizational changes. The library has three divisions: academic services, collection services and enterprise services.
- My position is a new position within a program called Digital User Services under the Academic Services Division. Digital User Services manages the library digital interfaces, including the library public website, mobile website, the OPAC, and recently the LibGuides. This is a small unit, currently consists of one director, a web managing editor and me, the digital user experience librarian. My role is to lead the library’s efforts in user experience study and design on digital interfaces (anything with a screen, not the physical space), and conduct research to understand user needs, motivations and behaviors. Since this is a new position, I have the opportunity to shape the position, and increasingly, I found myself in the position of providing consultation and education to other librarians and units who are interested in doing UX for their online content. Since I have been in various positions that relates to website management for more than 20 years, including content cycle management, Google analytics, and instructional technology, even though I have to learned a lot of new skills related to the various UX methodologies, I found that what I knew in website management greatly benefit this new position.
- The study collected qualitative data to answer several research questions, including faculty’s and students’: Library Research Process – The information seeking processes as related to their research or class projects Website Goals - Reasons they visit the library’s website Website Tasks - Tasks they rely on the website to accomplish Navigation and information architecture – How does the structure of our top menu options support users’ ability to accomplish their tasks? Content and Terminology – Do users understand the content and terminology on the homepage?
- Our website is very marketing-oriented, heavy on news and events, with little space for showing our resources and guiding users to find our resources. We have done usability tests on various areas of the website, the homepage, and the menus. That told us how users responded to the navigation and menu items we designed, whether they had problem using the menus, etc. But it didn’t tell us whether the user find the website useful, nor did it tell us what the users come to the website to do. I understand that a UX study like this takes a lot of time, and many web projects do not plan enough time for user study. At the time, our web manager left and we were interviewing a new manger. So I took advantage of the time to start an UX study, rather than waiting till the website redesign to start.
- The UX study include three parts. The first part is an interview. The second part is something called an“XO” exercise, which I will explain a little bit later. The third part is a sketch exercise where participants were asked to draw their ideal library home page. We modelled after similar studies conducted at the University of Michigan and University of Rochester.
- First, what’s your major? What do you study? What year are you in? Do you have school projects or assignments that require you to search for research materials? How do you go about doing that? Can you describe your work process? Do you use the library’s website? What do you usually do there?
- For the XO exercise, we make a print of the library’s homepage, and a print for each of the menu items. Then we ask participants to use a pen to “O” - circle the items on the page that you like and use the most, and “x” out any items on the page that you do not like or use. While they XO the items, we ask them to explain why they use or do not use the items If they o a page, we will ask What do you expect to find under this page? Which page would you miss if we get rid of it? If they x out a page, we will ask What do you expect to find under this page? What would you call the link? So we are interested in the reasons they use or do not use our menu, whether the problem is the terminology or something else
- After the XO exercise, we ask some further follow-up questions. What do you like about the website? What do you like least about the website? Did you find anything confusing to you? Do you have any suggestions to improve the library’s website? Then finally we asked participants to image that they can design the library’s website from scratch, and ask them to design an ideal website for themselves, catering to their needs?
- Since we are interested in participants who actually use the library’s website, we decided to recruited via the website. We put up a promotion in the homepage carousel with this image. We put the reward right here so it is eye-catching. We had very a good response and more than 15 students responded in a week including graduate students and PhDs. Faculty members are harder to recruit. I have one faculty member responded to the online promotion, but have to rely on liaisons to recruit the other two. Their schedule was very busy, and one had to change schedule three times. Carousel – weight on “sel”
- I used Springshare’s LibCal to schedule the users. This cut down scheduling time a great deal. I put available time slots in LibCal, and asked participants to choose a time they can meet during the next three weeks using the scheduler. Any chosen slots will turn red and the remaining available times stay green
- LibCal sent to participants an automatic confirmation. This automatic confirmation allows you to enter Confirm appointment time and location Direction Cancel option The scheduler also sent out a reminder the day before the test This cuts down on the email correspondence time.
- We conducted 10 one-hour sessions with participants in 2 weeks. Since one faculty member had to reschedule, we did that in the third week. I worked with a UX team consists of about 8 web editors who are representatives of their programs, some from public services and some from more technical programs such as our data curation program. For each of the sessions, I was the facilitator. Members of the UX team acted as note takers.
- We ended up with a lot of data. We have 10 copies of the homepage, 120 pages of the menus, and 10 pages of homepage sketches. We also have a lot of notes we took during the interview and when they went through the XO exercise and the sketching exercise. 46 menu and submenus
- To make sense of the data, I created an Excel work book to organize the data. I created one sheet for each interview question and each menu item. Then we went through all web screen shoots and record user responses and usage, transferred corresponding notes into the Excel sheets I did a few first then assigned UX group members to do a few each Some confusion. Wrote instructions
- After the data was entered, I was able to abstract data to create highly informative data such as this one which tells us which menu items are highly used, which ones are not used.
- Users said that they come to the website to accomplish tasks, mostly looking for research materials or key services. They are focused. They don’t like to read a lot. If it appears to be too much work, they just ignore it. “When I go to the library website it is very utilitarian” is the general sentiment.
- These are the menu items that we find have Frequent Use: 5 and more users indicated use
- Senior scholars know key researchers in their field and routinely follow their research by going to conferences and reading their articles. They trace the bibliography at the end of the articles and books they read to identify new material to read. For frequently used resources, they have bookmarked frequently used resources such as their databases. When they come to the website, they most often search for known items within the catalog, access a selected few known databases for articles, or browse e-journals for articles. Junior scholars: Junior scholars know a few key databases and are willing to explore to find more. Undergraduate students: Many students start with recommendations and assigned reading from faculty so they are looking for a very specific book or sometimes, article. Our catalog is their most highly used resource for that.
- Using the catalog, Google or Google Scholar for known item searching and broad topic searches is a common practice among all levels of users. Novice users search for articles with Google instead of Google Scholar. Quick access to the catalog, e-journals, and a select number of limited high-use databases.
- Another common practice among all level Google Phenomenon For overview, known item searching, for broad topic search Include faculty – surprising to some
- In addition to searching, users valued features that allow exploration of resources in one’s disciplines. Ideal Website - Homepage Drawings 6 out of the 9 users who drew the ideal website include a feature to browse by subject. One user drew a sidebar for discipline specific browsing. Another drew a side bar to browse by major. We have menu items such as databases A-Z, Subject Guides and LibGuides that show users our resources, the challenge is to design a system that encourage exploration.
- Faculty and students do need library support and instruction. Students who took library classes use resources better. They think their classmates are missing out. In the ideal website drawings, we found some users put “help” there. But they do not use our help-related menus Libguides not used – only one of the 10 users reported using Libguides, and that user had taken a library class Instructions not used When we probed a little bit, we found users have a “search first and explore and seek help later” mentality – they have some goals in their mind. That reminds me of the book “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping,” by Paco Underhill. They go in a fast food restaurant to how customers read signs. Sign on the way to the bathroom is useless, but signs facing people after they use the bathroom got read more. “No amount of merchandising can deter a shopper from his or her mission. The best you can do is go along for the ride.” So maybe online help such as LibGuides are more useful after the user has begun their initial search process.
- News and Events It have been a challenge for us to convince stakeholders about this, but hopefully with our data we will be able to convey to these stakeholders what are most important to users. In my competitor analysis, I have also seen that some libraries were able to strike a balance between showing news and events and users’ top tasks. kkk
- Planning takes time –Stakeholders come with a vague idea what they want to learn in a UX study, need help narrow down goals. Do you want to know who the users are? Any problems using the website, or how useful they think the website is? Different methodologies will draw out from users information that we want to learn from the users. I have to rely on others’ schedules, UX Culture - Another thing that I found was that even though librarians have heard about user experience, many of their concept of UX is usability test. I found that I needed to spend time explaining the different kinds of methods available and that usability test is not always method to choose, and if we choose methods such as interviews and focus groups, those take more time, but are good methods to use as they provide the answers you need. For our data analysis and report writing, I did it with the UX team. There were pros and cons. committee work - takes a lot of time and a long time as I have to rely on other people’s schedule. If I had done it myself, it would have been a lot faster. worthwhile to do it in a group. In the process of forming conclusions and recommendations, members of the UX team constantly went back to our observations – I think the process of report writing help the UX team understands the users better, and understand the importance of a user-centric website. I became the person who guided the process, instead of the one who made up all the interpretations and recommendations. It was everyone’s report not my report. I think along the process, I have changed a few minds – now that when we talked about other UX studies, the veterans nodded their heads and smiled as they understood what were involved. They also saw the value of UX. Since the members of UX team are core members of the library web editor’s committee, it changed the atmosphere of that committee a lot. So even though it took a long time (8 months), it is worthwhile for me at the current culture of my institution, as one of my goals is to develop a UX culture in my library.
- However, while we need to do these big studies once a while, I also realize that we need quick wins. As it is a process to educate others including library Admin about UX, we need to produce more studies to show the results of UX. Hall way tests – set up testing spots in public spaces in the library or student activity center Quick methods: one question survey Need to use more tech tools – online cart sort, Google keyword research Combinations of big studies and quick wins will help us develop the culture and see the results of UX
- Supported by UCSD Faculty Survey - a total of 203 complete responses University of Michigan’s “Interviews with Experienced Users” Cornell Personas