Reading this Seth Godin post I had to contemplate the situation librarians have found themselves in as the type of experience the users want has shifted to low fidelity, high convenience. As it exists today the library experience is best described as mostly high fidelity. Our profession is urged again and again to change its practices to meet the current market expectations for information search and retrieval. We’ve heard that convenience trumps quality every time, and that we need to follow suit and go low fidelity.

Godin almost perfectly describes this exact predicament in which we librarians find ourselves:

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, “We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We’re well regarded, we’re talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?” Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn care services, accounting services, tailoring services, consulting… all they want is the cheapest. The masses don’t want a better PC laptop. They just want the one with the right specs at the right price. It’s not because people are selfish (though they are) or shortsighted (though they are). It’s because in this market, right now, they’re not listening. They’ve been seduced into believing that all options are the same, and they’re only seeing price. In terms of educating the masses to differentiate yourself, the market is broken.

At one time we certainly were the kings of information delivery. When our user communities needed anything beyond a basic encyclopedia, a phone call or visit to the library was standard practice. But now all information and those who provide it are the same to the average citizen, and there’s no clear rationale for using the library. As Godin states, we’ve been focusing too much attention on trying to figure out how to get them “to buy from us again” instead of figuring out how to fit into their world so that we are of use to them on their terms – at least enough to build the relationships that can be our bread and butter. But can we librarians make the shift to the next big thing in a seamless fashion – as Groucho Marx did? Godin explains it:

The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theatre. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn’t complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.

Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn’t start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).

It’s extremely difficult to repair the market. It’s a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do.

That last section should really resonate with us librarians. As hard as we may wish for its return, the old model in which we served as the gatekeeper and primary information intermediary isn’t coming back. We’ve tried to repair the market and it hasn’t worked. How would we replicate what Groucho did in his career? What new service or platform could we move to in creating a completely different environment for library services. In some ways we are doing that now. Students learn in online environments supported by courseware. We are there. People text each other to chat, share ideas and ask questions. We are there. People use Twitter to communicate. We are there. In these ways we are moving on to the new media – just as Groucho did when the last big thing collapsed and he moved on to the next big thing. Groucho was probably highly effective at trendwatching and knowing what move to make next – or he had the right people doing it for him.

So we may have the capacity to change our stripes, figure out where the market is headed and find a way to integrate ourselves and our services. It fails if we only do it when it’s too late, and we get there screaming and kicking the whole way. But there may be something of value in leaving part of what we do in the past. Godin closes his post with a simple but meaningful caveat for librarians:

Please note that nothing I wrote above applies to niche businesses. In fact, exactly the opposite does. You can make a good living selling bespoke PC laptops or doing vaudeville today, even though the mass of the market couldn’t care a bit.

We need to remember that while it’s important to follow the market and trends and be there, there’s value in differentiating ourselves from all the other ways and sources people can go to for their information. Want to get help finding information from a skilled human – that’s the library’s niche. Want to get access to highly specialized information products – that’s the library’s niche. Want to build a relationship with someone who can recommend books and movies – that’s the library’s niche. Want to have a caring person read a story to your children – that’s the library’s niche. It may require us to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, but if we can play it both ways that’s only going to make the experience we deliver all that more memorable.

At some point someone must have asked Henry Ford if he conducted focus groups, surveys or ethnographic studies to find out what types of cars and unique features his customers wanted. I say that because the statement “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse” is a quote attributed to Ford that I’ve now heard used in multiple presentations and in multiple blog posts. An internet search of the phrase will bring up dozens of occurrences, yet know one actually knows if Ford said this or when he said it or in response to what sort of question. The essence of the quote is that it’s pointless to just ask your customers what they want because they either don’t know what they really want or what they think they want isn’t what they would really want if something much better was offered – like a car instead of a faster horse.

Those who use the quote will often point to the success of Apple, a company that promotes the idea of trying to determine what the users would like to have that they currently don’t have or cannot do, and uses that approach to improve on existing technologies or create systemic experiences where none exist. This all tends to conflict with the idea of using techniques such as surveys and focus groups to better understand user reaction to existing products and services, as well as wants and needs. What risks do organizations take if they ask these questions and then develop services or create change based on what they learned from the user? This is particularly critical when planning new buildings or renovations. Do we add dozens of additional electrical outlets because the users tell us they need them or because we observe them sitting on the floor next to a scarce outlet or do we take a risk on a new technology that can power devices wirelessly because we think they’ll want that even more – even if they don’t have it now?

So what do we do? Do we make educated guesses about these things in an attempt to pleasantly surprise the user with something new and unanticipated, or do we always try to make sure we know what the users want by taking the time to ask the right questions and listen carefully? Or, do we use anthropological and ethnographic methods that offer some mix of strategies. For example, if you watch the Deep Dive video you’ll see members of the IDEO shopping cart project team going out to supermarkets to talk to the people who use carts. They learn that the carts get stolen because of the metal’s value, that carts can damage cars if blown by the wind, that fast shoppers leave their carts at the end of the aisle and then walk to the products rather than taking the carts up and down the aisles and that parents take multiple approaches to putting kids in the carts. Some of this information is gathered by asking shoppers what they do while some comes from direct observation. In a previous post I pointed to the importance of learning about users from listening to and observing them; I related the story of the company that learned from observation that men used their body soap products in a very different way – and quite different from what they learned when questions were asked in focus groups.

It seems that more libraries are catching on to the use of anthropological methods that were pioneered at the University of Rochester Library. I have heard of several libraries that are exploring this method, and more will no doubt be employing it with librarians attending workshops on how to use this technique in their libraries. Just recently, the Library atCalifornia State University at Fresno, issued a report on their findings, and this will no doubt continue to add to the popularity of conducting anthropological studies of members of the library user community. So what might we learn from this study which examined student behavior across multiple dimensions of library use? First off, the study team involved faculty. That seems to be developing into an accepted model for conducting these studies. If your campus has anthropologists, seek them out to collaborate with you on this project. The report provides good insight into many techniques available to better understand student work practices. Anyone seeking to replicate this type of study will find good ideas in this report. As I read many of the recommendations and conclusions I find few that are particularly innovative and some mirror what we already know about student work practices and space preferences, but it is a reminder that creating a better user experience is not necessarily about concocting some cool new service. It’s about understanding your students and the things that give them a memorable library experience.

Can the library community benefit from more of these studies? As the authors of the Fresno study make clear in the introduction to their report there are significant differences between their library and others, such as the University of Rochester, that have conducted work practice studies and shared the results. Given the uniqueness of each library user community, one library’s findings about their students and faculty are quite likely to be different from another. Similar trends may be found across different communities, such as student procrastination or the desire for technology-outfitted study rooms, but the differences in demographics, size, resources and other factors suggest that each one could benefit by delivering a unique user experience. So expect more of these studies. Each will add to our knowledge of how to design a better library.

Perhaps the most basic premise for delivering a great library user experience is knowing what members of the user community want from the library, and being able to articulate their service expectations from the library. Then, using that knowledge, the librarian’s responsibility is to design an experience that delivers on those expectations and exceed them when possible. If successful we should be able to create a loyal base of community members who will support the library and desire to use it repeatedly – and recommend that their friends do so as well.

Much depends on our ability to identify and develop services that meet user expectations. But how well do we know what those expectations are? According to a recent research article, not well enough. This article’s findings should be a cause of concern for librarians hoping to design a better experience for their users. The bottom line: the priorities for the library staff and for the library users are poorly aligned. This is based on a study of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) that participated in the 2006 LibQUAL+ library quality survey. The authors, Damon Jaggars, Shanna Smith Jaggars and Jocelyn Duffy, in their article titled “Comparing Service Priorities Between Staff and Users in ARL Member Libraries” found that a disconnect existed between library staff and their users.[See portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 9 No. 4, 2009, pgs. 441-452]. For library staff, the highest priority was “affect of service”, but for all user groups (undergrad, grad and faculty) the highest priority was “information control”.

For those less familiar with LibQUAL, “affect of service” relates to service interactions between library staff and the users; survey participants are asked if library employees instill confidence, give individual attention, understand user needs and have the knowledge to answer questions. “Information content” refers to the materials and collections made available by the library to its users; respondents are asked about their access to printed and electronic materials, navigation of the library website and ease of use factors associated with finding information provided by the library. We may have a serious problem when what library staff think is most important is not what the users think is most important. If I think that good food is the most important component of a dining out experience, but the staff have as their highest priority something entirely different, such as comfortable seating, that may spell disaster for the quality of the overall experience.

But the more I thought about the findings, the less alarmed I was by it than the authors of the article. While this disconnect does exist, the good news from my perspective is that the staff of the ARL libraries included in the study believe that providing high quality service is a priority. Even if that was not the priority for the respondents, my expectation is that those ARL libraries where staff see affect of service as the highest priority are well positioned to deliver good service. While we can acknowledge that faculty, graduate and undergraduates may care less about the affect of service and more about the content, it should not diminish our desire to create a better user experience for them. I would encourage those who read to article to take from it an understanding that ARL libraries must always deliver high quality content for researchers, but a priority is to create the best relationships with the user community that will encourage them to see that the academic library is more than books, articles and media. The irony is that it is the people who acquire and make accessible the content that is the priority of the users. Now how do we get them to feel the same way about the people?

While I was pleased to see that user experience was one of the topics discussed at the regular Top Tech Trends program that is conducted at each American Library Association conference and sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), I have to ask if this is the right sort of forum for a conversation about user experience. Now admittedly I was unable to attend this session, but I did obtain some information from a report that appeared in Library Journal. According to the news, in the segment in which UX was mentioned, Amanda Etches-Johnson:

urged the audience to consider the concept of “user experience” (UX) as new technology-driven services are designed. “In the library world, it’s still pretty fresh to our ears,” she said of UX design talk, but stressed the importance of considering the entirety of a user’s interactions with a library, whether online or in person.

I agree, that despite two years of discussing design thinking and user experience here at DBL, plus two articles in American Libraries covering each topic and multiple conference presentations, many librarians still equate design talk and UX with the external and internal physical design of the library facility. So it’s great whenever librarians are given an opportunity to expand their understanding of design and user experience concepts. All that said, my concern is that the librarians who are getting their first exposure to UX through the program or the LJ news item, will come away with the impression that UX is just a trend. Consider some of the other topics covered at the Top Tech Trends forum. Texting. That’s hot right now but like any technology it will likely be replaced by something better. Discovery systems. Yep. Hot right now but sure to be replaced by something more advanced. Apps. Even the speaker who spoke about it said this is the year that apps die. So much for that trend. But what about UX? Does it fall into the same category as texting, discovery technology and apps?

No, I don’t think so. I’d like to think that as more librarians learn about user experience and come to value what it has to offer they will add the importance of designing and delivering a great library UX to their set of core values – those statements that define what we believe and how we behave as an organization. Core values are or should be timeless; they are not trendy. None of this is to suggest that Etches-Johnson believes that user experience is just a trend. I’m sure she shares my belief that user experience should be at the foundation of what drives the library to deliver memorable and unique experiences, and that it must become a core guiding strategy for the present and future.

If you attended the top tech trends event or read about it, take a few minutes to think about user experience, how it was described, the context in which it was discussed and what that meant to you and your library. If you are new to the concept of UX, take some time to read past posts about it here at DBL; commit to learning more. If we want to design better libraries, user experience must be more than a trend.

It seems about that time for my bi-annual post here at DBL: the original hotspot for UX and Design-Thinking in the library blogosphere. There has been a lot of recent hype in this area so I thought I’d add to the conversation.

One of my favorite projects at UCSB is serving on a new Biology Building Committee. This venture is located in the Library’s backyard and so I’m on the team to represent our interests, which include a shared loading dock. Recently, I had the opportunity to step outside that role and offer some insight about workspace.

The building is predominately labs and offices, as opposed to classrooms or teaching spaces. It will be very interdisciplinary featuring scientists, biologists, and engineers. And it will house faculty (Principle Investigators), researchers, graduate students, undergrads, as well as administrative & support staff.

One of the interesting themes that is emerging is the idea of workspace. We’re still in the conceptualization stage but I have tried to pull from my UX days at Georgia Tech during this discussion. Originally we had envisioned a suite of offices. (See image #1 below.) The faculty get a window view, the grad students and researchers share a room, and likewise, the undergrads are bunched together. I didn’t really think to question this arrangement because it seemed like traditional hierarchy that one would expect to find in an academic building: row after row of offices.

Then the architects shook us up. They presented a “what-if” scenario by dropping some walls and crafting a more open design. (See image #2 below.) And even the more ambitious one, image #3.

This really clicked with me. It allowed me to stop thinking of people working in an office, but rather, to imagine a space that fits users’ needs. I urged the committee not to think in terms of Student #1 using Workspace #1 (and Student #2 using Space #2) but instead to think of creating various zones.

Since most of their work is going to be done via laptops, people won’t need to be chained down to a desk; instead they will have the freedom to work in the particular area that best suits their need for that day. Some days they may need to crunch data or write a report and hence will require a quiet space. Other days they might want to be in the open while they run a software program, review notes, or draft models. And some days they might need to brainstorm, mentor, or share resources. Instead of trying to do all of these functions in one room, it makes sense to design designated areas based on the functions of the work that needs to be done. (quiet space, writing space, talking space, etc)

I volunteered to work with the lead on this project on observing and interviewing students and faculty who might inhabit this building. It will be interesting to see how they currently operate and how we might be able to design a space that could improve their productivity.

The point that I am trying to make here isn’t about a biology building—the bigger theme is deploying librarians armed with expertise out into their communities. A lot of times, particularly in academics, we limit ourselves to an instructional or research role, but skill sets like UX can open new doors.

If you develop experience (and a reputation) with assessment, ethnography, Design-Thinking, marketing, programming, facilitating, project management, events planning, or something else to that effect—somebody somewhere can use your help. I view this as the ultimate form of outreach. It pushes us outside of the library and beyond the classroom, and places us on committees, taskforces, and working groups around the campus. That’s how we can make a real difference and not only help to make meaningful contributions, but also expand people’s perceptions on the value and capabilities that their libraries (and librarians) have to offer.

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