Name: Mackenzie Salisbury Title: Reference and Instruction Librarian Library: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Flaxman Tell us about how you integrate UX, assessment and/or design thinking in your work.
As a Reference + Instruction Librarian, I am constantly in a mode of revising and rethinking my job to be more conscious of the users’ overall experience. Working at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), our student population tend to be more visual and respond to contemporary issues. For me, integrating their information seeking behavior by adapting sessions to utilize these channels, helping me to to keep students engaged and challenge their notions of who librarians are. I aim to not only use reflection in my own practice, but to help create a culture in the library where reflection is encouraged at all levels of the library. Do you have a specific project you would like to share? Within the last few months my colleagues and I have started a few initiatives to get Flaxman Library up to speed in terms of current UX + Assessment practices. This includes taking more rigorous statistics, thinking more strategically about our place within the larger institution, and ensuring we are reflecting on our current policies and procedures with diversity and equity in mind. One especially exciting new collaboration is with SAIC’s department of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to think more holistically about student and faculty experiences with the library and librarians, especially in terms of instruction. As our instruction program is becoming more defined and integrated within SAIC, we can serve as a good example of how necessary and important this collaboration is! How has Library UX Chicago helped you? The community of librarians and other UX professionals that participate in the events at UX Chicago makes this group really unique. I think that it has helped me to really consider the intentionality that UX brings to the table, but has also exposed me to fields of inquiry and professions that I didn’t even know existed! Or even better, the melding of two fields into something new and interesting, such as Dr. Kate McDowell and her work with Data Storytelling! Have you learned a new skill lately? Non related library skill: Embroidery Library related skill: Re-learning the newest Camtasia for making video tutorials! What tools or methods have made the most difference in your work and why? This may sounds cheesy, or dated, but I recently was able to relocate my office to be in the same space as my colleague Alison Rollins. Being in a space in which collaboration is fluid and open really changes how I work on a daily basis. I was really excited when she joined our team last April as she has such a different experience from my own in terms of librarianship - coming from teaching at a preparatory college, being successful poet, as well as a person of color. I really value all that she brings to our library as a colleague and friend. What’s the best part of your work day? Studio visits! Studio visits are essentially a reference interaction but in graduate students’ studio spaces. Getting out of the library and into a space in which the students feel comfortable and we can look at their work together, talk about their research practice, and what other ideas they might consider is one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of my job. Perhaps the other difference with these visits is that they are not usually focused around a specific question, but more organic, like research itself. Plus, it allows me to learn so much more about what students’ needs are in terms of resources! By Elizabeth Edwards, Past Chair
As 2018 comes to a close, I am happy to report on another successful year of activity, growth, and transition for Library UX Chicago. By the numbers:
In late 2017, we welcomed three new members to our steering committee: Katie Ediger (Illinois Tech), Amy Killebrew (Columbia College), and John Jung (University of Chicago). In March, presenters discussed programs and strategies for assessing instruction at our first event of the year. A lively discussion followed, with many attendees participating in a happy hour after. We secured a continuing education grant from RAILS that was used to bring storytelling scholar Dr. Kate McDowell to Chicago in May to put on an engaging workshop that helped attendees think about how and why to tell stories with library data. We are grateful to RAILS for their ongoing support for this group. We launched a newsletter to better communicate with, and feature, our membership. In August, we kicked off our accessibility series by exploring best practices for designing more inclusive and accessible interfaces, services, and presentations. A second event in November discussed strategies for extending library services to traditionally underserved students. Our book club met to discuss three works:
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the ongoing success of this group. We hope to see you at an upcoming event or to hear about your work via our Google Group. By Abby Annala I have been a member of the Library UX Chicago steering committee since the group’s inception back in 2014. This role has provided me with several opportunities for personal growth, networking, and professional participation. I’ve been able to present projects I’ve worked on at my library, introduce big picture concepts I learned about in graduate school, and share ways that I’ve worked with my colleagues on various initiatives. It’s also given me a unique perspective about incorporating assessment, design, and user experience into my work.
What might surprise most people is that I am neither an assessment, design, nor UX Librarian. I am a reference and instruction librarian that specializes in research for Business Administration and Communication. While the mission of Library UX is not reflected in my job description, I’ve found ways to incorporate these philosophies into most of my daily activities. I approach instruction with an outcomes-based framework – knowing that I will have wasted both my and the students time by not starting with an identified set of learning outcomes. As someone without a formal background in anything other than instruction, LibUX has helped me grow my skill set. At my home institution I have since been able to participate in library-wide initiatives like space planning, survey design, and participatory design projects. And those big-picture concepts from graduate school I mentioned before? They were things I learned while earning my MBA at Loyola. The interdisciplinary nature of this type of professional development truly knows no bounds. Library UX Chicago strives to provide low cost professional development programming for all library workers – from directors to part-time associates – not just those with assessment, design, and UX in their job titles. Our programming is diverse and inclusive of all library functions – and can help anybody in libraries develop a framework for approaching their work with a new perspective. Our programming allows library workers from all backgrounds to share how they are incorporating these three core principles into operational functions like instruction, LibGuides or library websites, and service design. Consider all our events open to anyone – even if you don’t work in a library - and consider your experiences and projects a valuable contribution to our programs and our group. The steering committee always welcomes program suggestions – so please contact us with any ideas you have about incorporating a design, assessment, or UX framework into your library role! I’d also like to thank every person that’s attended and presented at our events in the past. Your willingness to share your experiences makes for a diverse, dynamic, and engaging networking and professional development organization for employees of all job titles. Please join us at our upcoming event: Service Design for Underserved Populations at DePaul University on Friday, November 30th. By John Jung
The streets curve in Sheffield in a way they never curve in Chicago, and the entire time I was there I was very aware of how I go about wayfinding and how I orient myself in an unfamiliar space. I think it's a good frame of mind for a UX conference. Considering the theme of this year's UXLibs conference, inclusivity, I was also often struck by small interactions, like how I wait in line for something like a cup of coffee. Since the conference draws attendees from many countries there were lots of opportunities to compare perspectives. A lot of us were travelers. The social aspect of the conference was more important to me than normal since I was giving a workshop and would miss the workshops given by others. Bryony Ramsden gave a workshop on coding and analyzing quantitative data. Eva Jirjahlke’s workshop was about framing problems—making sure you’re solving “the right problem”, and rapidly prototyping solutions. Carl Barrow introduced diary studies and cognitive maps as a way to understand users as they interact with physical and digital aspects of libraries. And Shelley Gullikson talked about useful friction in UX design and user research. My own workshop was on speculative and critical design. Keynote presentations were thought-provoking, and they stuck with me: Sara Lerén, Design Director at In Use, talked about inclusivity from a cognitive perspective. Christian Lauersen from the Royal Danish Library talked about the challenges of creating an inclusive workplace and an inclusive space for patrons. Dr. Janine Bradbury, Senior Lecturer in Literature at York St. John University, talked about inclusivity and race, and Dr. Kit Heyam, a transgender awareness trainer, gave a presentation to help conference attendees build awareness around trans issues. I can highly recommend next year’s conference, which was just announced via Twitter (@UXLibs), to any UX practitioners in libraries. For a recap of this year’s conference in the presenters' own words (which will inevitably include things that I missed) the User Experience in Libraries 2018 Yearbook will be published later this year, and it will include write-ups of all of these presentations and more. Please consider ordering a copy. Tell us about how you integrate UX, assessment and/or design thinking in your work.
We are lucky enough to have a full-time User Experience Librarian on our team. With her help, we take my HTML design mockups and test them with patrons. The results from her testing are then assessed and used to update the mockups. After getting approval from the responsible Task Group, the mockups are handed-off to the developers to code. Since my mockups are created with html and Sass, my front-end code is easily transferred into production. This workflow allows us to test new layouts and features while they are still malleable and “inexpensive” to change. Since the mockups look like “the real thing” they also create a more realistic item to test with. Do you have a specific project you would like to share? We recently updated how our patrons request Interlibrary Loan/UBorrow/BorrowDirect materials. In the past when a patron wanted a book that we didn’t own, we asked them to make a choice as to which of the three services to get the item from. This meant that they had to go through each service themselves until they found the item they wanted. With the upgraded service, this choice is made on the backend. The patron just makes a request with a link from either WorldCat or our Catalog, and the materials show up in a few days. This project incorporated testing that was done years previously when we were first considering how we could improve upon our requesting services. This previous data informed the new user interface testing and was reiterated in the final report. I appreciated that we were able to dig into past testing and reuse that valuable data to inform our preliminary layouts and items to test with users. What have you read lately? My reading list has been eclectic lately, mainly because I am in a book club with two other coworkers. Every year, we choose a reading list to select books from and read one book a month from that list. (This year we are reading from The Lady Library curated by The Strand.) We get together over a lunch to discuss the book and decide on the next one to read. I would highly recommend starting a book club with coworkers; it is a great way to have an outside of work activity with your team and forces you to take at least one break a month to focus on non-work topics. What tools or methods have made the most difference in your work and why? My new favorite tool is one for project management rather than something UX specific. Since my job has me working on projects from different Library departments, I need a way to show how “expensive” a project was or that I am staying within the estimated hours. The web app Toggl has helped me easily track my hours by project and department. With this data, I can help prioritize upcoming feature requests or projects. My project manager uses this data to create a project plan for the quarter so that our team, and administration, has a general idea of the projects and features we will be releasing that quarter. How has Library UX Chicago helped you? Library UX Chicago has connected me with like-minded peers that I enjoy talking and seeing at each meetup. I appreciate the variety of topics covered and that different expertise levels are represented. It has also given me a platform to discuss and present projects I’ve worked on or are still working on. Additionally, as a presenter and an audience member, Library UX Chicago holds a space for me to talk about project failings or hang-ups without judgement (and sometimes I even get recommendations or solutions). Knaflic, C. N. (2015). Storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals. Hoboken: Wiley.
Magnuson, L. (2016). Data visualization a guide to visual storytelling for libraries. Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Rowman & Littlefield. McDowell, K. (2018). Paradoxes of storytelling in librarianship. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1), 32–37. https://doi.org/10.21173/newlibs/4/7 Quesenbery, W., & Brooks, K. (2010). Storytelling for user experience: crafting stories for better design (1st ed.). Brooklyn, NY: Rosenfeld Media. Gibbons, S. UX Stories Communicate Designs. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-stories/ See more resources Data Storytelling: Structures and Strategies with speaker Dr. Kate McDowell
Friday May 4, 2018 Instruction Assessment Event Friday March 9, 2018 By John Jung
UXLibs is “an established international conference which explores user experience research and design thinking techniques” in libraries. The theme of UXLibs IV is Inclusive UX—this year’s conference will take place in Sheffield on June 6 and 7. I recommend the conference as a way to get up to speed with UX research methods and as a way to broaden your network: last year UXLibs III brought together delegates from 19 countries. Here are just a few highlights from last year’s conference. In the opening address, conference organizer Andy Priestner relayed several questions he hears libraries asking: “are UX techniques being applied more in libraries?” and “is design thinking being properly embedded in libraries?” Like kids on a long car trip, people are essentially asking, “are we there yet?” How mature is user experience as a skillset in libraries? Although libraries are making great strides, there is still a lot of room for growth. Andy shared several UX maturity models which are useful as a way to think about the relative maturity of UX practices in different organizations and as a way to think about how to improve. Matthew Reidsma, Web Services Librarian at Grand Valley State University, talked about ethics and values in user experience work. Starting from examples of architecture that embody the values of those who commissioned it, he discussed analytics, personas, and algorithms and how in each of these domains libraries have opportunities to work in ways that either reinforce or challenge their ethical commitments. Meredith Evans, director of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, talked about social responsibility and community archiving. Working from experiences with three different projects—The UNC LGBTQ Collection, Documenting Ferguson, and Documenting the Now—she explored how archives can document the present moment in an ethical way. She raised questions like, if an archive includes tweets from the general public about a significant current event, how should it consider the privacy of those who made the posts? For more about these projects and others, check out the book User Experience in Libraries Yearbook 2017: Stories, Techniques, Insights. By Devin Savage
As the steering group talked about inaugural launch of our newsletter, we really wanted to have a dedicated space for our community to participate and contribute ideas and concepts to our ongoing conversation. For example, a recent exchange on the ARL-ASSESS email list, "Benchmarking Seat Counts," I found extremely interesting and relevant to many of the concepts we have discussed here at Library UX Chicago. I was reminded my previous stock answer about my interest in this group, which was that I wanted to look at "the intersections of assessment, design thinking, and user experience in libraries." I would suggest this threaded discussion provides not only the evaluative inquiry the title implies, but a wide variety of tools, literature, and practices that should inform not only library assessment, but library UX and design strategies as well. I personally plan to draw upon some of these sources as we talk with campus partners about our student spaces and 24/5 service. For our future issues, we eagerly invite you all to contribute and help us think about the challenges and opportunities facing us. Please consider submitting an article or idea that caught your eye, with a couple of sentences about why you found it intriguing and/or relevant! Basic Info Name: Annie Armstrong Title: Liaison Librarian for Education & Psychology, Coordinator of Teaching & Learning Services Library: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Richard J. Daley Library How long have you been a member of Library UX Chicago? Since close to the beginning, I believe (a few years?) Questions Tell us about how you integrate UX, assessment and/or design thinking in your work. Due to the nature of my position, I think about design thinking within the context of instructional design. I try to focus on how I create an engaging, meaningful activity that achieves set learning goals and resonates with students beyond the duration of the class. The book Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe was helpful to me in becoming more intentional about how I design a learning experience, particularly the idea of backward design. Do you have a specific project you would like to share? It wasn’t a major project, but I recently redesigned a scavenger hunt activity for a first-year class in an attempt to make it more student-centered (the old activity had become, or truthfully always was pretty staid). The class was based on the idea of Placemaking (you can learn more about the idea at http://www.placemakingchicago.com/). I had students explore the physical and virtual spaces of the library in small groups and devise their own “top ten” lists of how the space was useful, as well as how it might fall short in meeting their needs as community members. They then posted their lists on Padlet. It was interesting to see that students collectively discovered most of what I would’ve told them in a more controlled activity, and they provided useful feedback/assessment data on how website and the library space failed to meet their needs in certain respects. What have you read lately? I’m reading a few instruction books this summer in preparation for our summer instruction discussions and planning: Critical Library Pedagogy Handbook 1&2 and the 6-part series Framing Information Literacy: Teaching Grounded in Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice, which devotes a volume to each frame of the ACRL Framework. Both are published by ACRL. I’m also currently reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy and Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History, by Tori Telfer, a Chicago author. How has Library UX Chicago helped you? As a coordinator of teaching and learning services, I facilitate planning of instruction within my department and participate in planning library wide conversations about various teaching-related topics. I’ve Have you learned a new skill lately? I’m learning how to build tutorials using Captivate. I’m starting by watching a bunch of tutorials on Lynda.com. What tools or methods have made the most difference in your work and why? Methods: When working with librarians, I like brainstorming using lots of post-its that can be categorized and rearranged. It’s a good way to include lots of voices and ideas. When working with students, I enjoy mind-mapping as a method for brainstorming keywords, breaking down topics, and making associations between ideas. Tools: Google Docs is pretty great. Collaborating is very seamless, and I like how the spreadsheets app is more visually appealing than excel as long as you’re using it for something basic. I also love how easy it is to create and embed slides, documents and forms in a lib-guide for instructional purposes. I often use Google forms to collect some information from graduate students before an instruction session. |
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