User Centered Design

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User Centered Design

• David Lindahl
• Director of Digital Library Initiatives
• University of Rochester Libraries

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Agenda

• Common Usability Issues
• User Centered Design
• Roles
• Activities
• Technologies

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Common Usability Issues

• Priorities
• Search Interfaces
• Technology revealed
• Authentication

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What is User Centered Design?

• Create usable user interface
• Reduce need for teaching, help, and manuals
• Uncover and address unmet needs
• Follow a process
• skill sets
• responsibilities
• artifacts
• testing
• Iterative

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What do we believe?

• Web design
• a job for librarians
• not committee work
• cross-disciplinary work
• requires ongoing commitment
• Website is for doing, not teaching
• Library technologies are not inherently
  user-centered

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Design by Committee
Committee
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User Centered Design Process
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Who (skills and experience)
Content

• Librarians
• Staff

Design
Usability

• User interface design
• Visual design
• Web design standards

• Usability Testing Methods

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Responsibilities Content

• Manage overall project
• Provide progress reports
• Select products, work with vendors
• Research the possibilities
• Define key tasks
• Raise issues

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Tasks ? Key Tasks

• Task What did the user come to your website to
  try and accomplish?
• Find a book by keyword, author, or name
• Find articles by topic or citation
• Find course reserves
• Find a journal by title
• Find non-book material
• Find remote access instructions
• Renew my materials
• Check my fines
• Find hours

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Responsibilities Design

• Create designs
• Initial design prototype in response to key tasks
  defined by content
• Subsequent iterations response to issues and
  usability
• Document issues and respond
• Create site style guidelines

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Design Iterations
Iteration 3
Iteration 1
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Design Iterations
Iteration 37
Iteration 116
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Design Iterations
Iteration 126
Iteration 188
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Issue-Response Table
Issue Response
1 Staff Why are just links Rush Rhees and Carlson on the home page, there are 11 river campus libraries you know!
2 Staff I think there should be an area of the site that will let students check out books, and look up their due dates and fine, etc.
3 Staff I dont like the color.
4 Usability Testing showed that in the Search for Books section, users didnt understand the terms Subject Heading and Call Number. Those who did understand the terms didnt find them particularly useful.
5 Usability The picture on dominates the most important real estate on the page. Also, the title of the image is nearly invisible.
6 Usability In Search for Books users didnt realize that the radio buttons could be clicked to change the kind of search they were doing
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Style Guidelines
Page Editors Checklist
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Responsibilities Usability

• Choose appropriate test
• Perform tests
• Report results back to design and content
• Guide key task process

Jeffrey Rubin, Handbook of Usability Testing (New
York John Wiley Sons, Inc., 1994).
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Select appropriate test
Mental model Focus group Card sort
Cognitive walk-through Heuristic Paper prototype Assessment
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Mental models Benchmark Work practice Contextual inquiry Real users visit other library sites. Real users show how they do their work on your site. Find a book on affirmative action. Renew your books. Are you writing a paper? Show me how you find material. Did you visit the library website today? Show me what you did there.
Focus groups Real users talk about about their library website activity. What do you like about the library site? What do you do on the site?
Card sort Real users shuffle cards into meaningful piles and give the piles meaningful labels. Hours Interlibrary Loan DVDs
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Cognitive walk-through or Heuristic Experts interact with our prototype Find a book on affirmative action. Experts apply a checklist of heuristics to our prototype. Sample Recognition rather than recall. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another.
Paper prototype Real users interact with paper. A human being plays computer. Find a book on affirmative action. Renew your books.
Assessment Classic testing Real users complete tasks on a prototype. Find a book on affirmative action. Renew your books.
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What is needed?

• Commitment from library administration
• Staff Support
• Time
• Resources
• Staff time
• New staff
• Technology
• Training

LITA Regional Institutes http//tinyurl.com/o34q
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Create a usability group

• Train on usability techniques card sort, mental
  model/key task creation, heuristic, and
  assessment
• Practice
• Testing
• Writing up findings

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Create the design role

• One or two people maximum
• People who work very well together
• Begin work on page structure, site organization
  and hierarchy, site template
• Create site style guidelines draft
• Create an issue-response process with document
  templates

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Create one or more content groups

• Brainstorm content group charge
• Select group members (dont include people who
  are in the design or content groups, they already
  have a defined role in the process)
• Select a time period group should disband at
  the end
• Set goals (two design iterations and rounds of
  testing, or 3 out of 5 test subjects undergrads
  - able to find an article without help)

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How

1. Content group defines key tasks (guided by
   usability group) for the site of for the section
2. Design group creates a design that supports
   accomplishing the key tasks (gives to usability)
3. Usability group tests the design with users,
   based on the key tasks
4. Deliver design/wireframe and usability results to
   content group
5. Content Group - Identify additional content group
   issues
6. Deliver content group issues and usability
   results to design group for next iteration
   (iterate, dont debate)
7. Go to step 3

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Technologies

• Researcher Pages
• GUF Getting Users to Full-text
• CUIPID Catalog User Interface for Prototyping
  and Iterative Development

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Researcher Pages
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Researcher Pages
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GUF

• OpenURL Resolver created at Rochester
• Replaces link menu
• Works with databases, and metasearch
• Automatically takes the user to the best
  available resource (one of these)
• Full-text online (in HTML or PDF)
• Catalog record (for items available in print)
• Interlibrary loan pre-filled-in request form

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CUIPID 3