Posts tagged with Usability in Blog Tiny Studies

Showing 1 - 6 of 6 items
University of Michigan library study spaces website
February 24, 2023
  • Denise Leyton
As students, we all know the struggle of trying to find the perfect study space on campus. The Library Environments UX Research Team and the Library Information Technology Design and Discovery (D&D) Team worked together to improve the user experience of the Library’s study spaces booking website. Author: Marjunique Louis, Master of Science in Information 2024
Word cloud of interview themes, such as results relevance, filtering, record display, call number, course reserves, advanced search, Boolean queries, etc.
August 10, 2020
  • Robyn Ness
U-M Library’s Library Search launched in 2018 as a unified search engine application containing five previously distinct interfaces: Catalog, Articles, Databases, Online Journals, and Library Websites. Library Search was a big change for users, and an increase in user support requests suggested that further exploration was needed to pinpoint user pain points. The authors began an exploratory study that helped understand users’ experiences and identified areas for continued work.
Persona for undergraduate student.
December 13, 2018
  • Robyn Ness
The first post ("Personas: A Classic User Experience Design Technique") in this 2-part series described what personas are and, generally, how to create them. I closed with some cautions about ways personas might come out less than helpful – creating flat, overloaded, or fake (unresearched) personas. The second post presents our persona development for a specific website project.
Image contains letters spelling ANALYTICS, above a set of colored pencils.
September 7, 2018
  • Ken Varnum
Not everything a library wants to know is available via web-scale analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Often, custom instrumentation and logging are the best way to answer usability and analytics questions, and can offer better protections for patron privacy as well.
Student drawn map of the Hatcher Graduate Library.
April 18, 2017
  • Emily Puckett Rodgers
It’s not uncommon for academic research libraries, especially large ones, to have multiple renovations that add a wing, a floor, or even a new building. The University of Michigan Library buildings on our central campus are no exception. Our undergraduate and graduate libraries form a complex whose structure is just that. Many times a day, staff members direct visitors, patrons, or even a colleague to their intended destination.
image of a dictionary page with definition of definition in view
March 9, 2017
  • Heidi Burkhardt
The words we choose matter and having a shared vocabulary around user experience research is an important component of the work. This post presents definitions of user experience, user research, and usability testing, while examining how they intersect and why determining the frame of your research is good practice. Plus the one phrase we try not to use...