Posts tagged with User Research in Blog Library Tech Talk

The second Library Search Benchmark Survey launched earlier this year and we gathered feedback from students, faculty, staff and library employees about finding and accessing materials through Library Search. We also measured changes in user satisfaction, ease of use, user challenges and wins from our first survey in 2022. Participation from users outside the library grew significantly and responses helped us identify clear and actionable insights we’re excited to share and act on in the coming year.

LIT’s Design and Discovery department received generous support from an anonymous donor to fund a Library User Experience Research Fellow position. Our first fellow was Suzan Karabakal, a master’s student at the U-M School of Information. She investigated and recommended changes to the way Library Search presents results. Suzan conducted user research to identify specific changes we could make to improve our “Everything” results screen and search results for Catalog and Articles.

Everyone who works in the library, including some student workers, uses the intranet -- that’s over 450 people! In preparation for a major Drupal update and intranet redesign, the Intranet Upgrade Investigation Team (IUIT) has done a ton of thoughtful user research to guide our work including a survey, open card sort and closed cart sort. The findings are informing our progress and helping meet the goal of making the intranet a sustainable and user friendly tool that everyone wants to use.