Interesting graphic in the back of the current Harvard Business Review. A nice warning not to rely on shiny new toys to drive interest, but rather we need consider the real issues/barriers preventing success and start there. Think of this as the librarian behind the reference desk– you get shiny new web tools or even a new physical desk for that matter– but is that really the solution– or is there a problem with the model instead?

The latest issue on IN, BusinessWeek’s design supplement, is now available online. If you are into innovation, this is a must issue for you. The focus is on the most innovative companies. The report ranks the 50 companies that value creative people in good times and bad. This special report on “The World’s Most Innovative Companies” includes an interview with Jeff Bezos of Amazon, profiles of firms such as GE Healthcare, Nintendo, and Hewlett-Packard. Plus there are two slide shows on innovation tools and collaborative innovation.

So, which companies made the top ten? Try to guess a few before you check out the list below:

1. Apple

2. Google

3. Toyota

4. General Electric

5. Microsoft

6. TATA Group

7. Nintendo

8. Procter & Gamble

9. Sony

10. Nokia

Does it all sound too corporate for you? Hey, this is BusinessWeek. I don’t doubt there are a few lessons in innovation found within this issue of IN. That’s why I’ll be reading it, just as I do everytime IN is published.

Empathic design is an important part of an overall design thinking approach to designing better libraries. It’s all about understanding your users from their perspective - putting yourself in their shoes so to speak - as a way of rethinking how your library could deliver better products and services. If you want to explore the empathic design concept in greater depth I recommend a three-part series by Dirk Knemeyer on applied empathy. He describes it as a “design framework for meeting human needs and desires”. Part one of the series focuses on applying empathy to the design process and provides an introduction to the framework. Part two of the series explains the three dimensions of human behavior and outlines specific needs and desires to which products and services can be designed. Part three of the series shows how the framework can be put to practical use.

To understand the framework you first need to become familiar with the five states of being. About them Knemeyer says they:

reflect the increasing relationship between the power and importance of needs at each level and the degree of personal commitment and desire each level engenders toward a product or user experience. That is to say, even those who have not yet realized their lowest-level needs can identify the value and impact of, as well as tacitly desire, the highest-level states of being.

The five states of being are participation, engagement, productivity, happiness and well-being. While understanding the five states of being is important to appreciating the framework, Knemeyer’s three dimensions of human behavior are critical to the framework. The dimensions are the analytical, the physical and the emotional. Reading about the dimensions added to my thinking about how the overall library experiences need to be a totality of experiences rather than isolated ones. Great library user experiences need to be more than just an isolated experience at one desk or one person; they need to be delivered across the organization, not unlike reaching people on all three dimensions. All three are explained in greater detail in part two, where you can find a visual representation of these ideas, but of them Knemeyer writes:

Rather than simply considering a product and how customers will use it, be conscious of the fact that people ultimately need each of their analytical, emotional, and physical needs met…If we are cognizant of this and actively consider all three when planning our products, marketing, and experiences, we are much more likely to enjoy design success.

So how might a library experience meet the user’s needs on the analytical, physical and emotional levels? Meeting analytical needs is perfect for the library because it is all about the mind. Everything from a good book, a featured speaker, getting help with research and even getting involved in games can help to meet analytical needs and desires. The physical and emotional needs are a bit more challenging. Library activities are hardly physical, unless you count carrying books and bound volumes to the photocopier or circulation desk. But I suspect that most folks know that library work is a cerebral endeavor and don’t mistake it for a fitness activity. I’m on the border for emotional needs. For some readers, libraries can take on an almost spiritual quality. FInding the just right book or having a social moment can certainly elicit emotion in library users.

I’ll be thinking more about this and how the library experience could meet all three human dimensions of human behavior. Knemeyer’s ideas on applied empathy are helpful to me in seeing there is more to empathic design than just putting yourself in the place of the user. There are multiple dimensions in which an empathic understanding can develop. For now I’ve got to tackle a pile of good user experience articles that I’ve been meaning to read. More on that later.

Owing to a hectic week of travel, both personal and professional, I didn’t get to finish a post I’m working on, so I guess I’ll take my cues from the mass media. When it doubt, rehash old content. Well, maybe I can do slightly better than that thanks to a nice integration of some prior DBL content by Walt Crawford. In his role as leader of the fairly new PALINET Leadership Network, Crawford has arranged with various bloggers to mashup and re-post their content. One good example of that work recently appeared over at the Leadership Network.

In a piece titled Innovation and Control several different past DBL posts come together to provide a surprisingly coherent essay on creating opportunities for expanding or faciliting innovation and creativity in libraries. If you are fairly new to DBL and want to catch up on some of the past posts on innovation and creativity take a moment to give this a read.

Note - there is a possibility that you may need to register for the Leadership Network to get to this article though I don’t think it is necessary. Like many wiki communities registration may only be needed if you want to add your content. However, if you have any sort of interest in leadership and related issues, why not get registered for the PLN while you are there.

I was glad to come across the blog Design for Service recently because it helped me to better grasp and articulate the difference between what normally happens at our service desks and what could be happening. I had been referring to desk interactions as “transactions” which is not entirely inaccurate but it just sounds inappropriate. To my way of thinking a transaction is what happens when you conduct business at an ATM - something mechanical in nature. Consider checking out a book. I see people using our self-check machines, and for them it is a convenient transaction - much like using an ATM. When I observe people doing the same thing at our circulation desk it might be a routine transaction, or depending on the people involved in the exhange it might be more than that, quite possibly an encounter but rarely an experience.

In his post “The Experience Pledge” Jeff Howard’s point is that not everything - in fact most things - is not an experience. What are they? He writes:

Our lives are mainly composed of encounters, not experiences. The difference between an encounter and an experience is the difference between a gathering and a party. It’s the difference between eating and having a meal. It’s the difference between stepping and dancing; and between speaking and singing.

The difference between these encounters and experiences is that in the case of the experience we are recognizing that something special, unique or memorable is happening. You might not remember what you had for lunch a few days ago if you simply eat the same boring few things week in and week out, but if you had a fantastic dining experience some time ago it’s likely you still remember it well. But that’s not all. Howard points to three distinct feature of well-designed (they don’t happen by accident in most cases) experiences:

* It’s an encounter with a clearly articulated beginning, middle and end.
* It’s so compelling people would pay admission just to be part of the interaction.
* It’s designed so that people must be there directly to benefit.

Where Howard confuses me though is his distinction between a UX Designer and an Experience Designer. He believes that most UX Designers only design enounters, and that the people designing products and services that meet his three criteria are actually Experience Designers. That difference may be a bit too fine grained for me. I’d like to think that in our library environments a person or team that designs experiences can be called any number of titles, but what really counts is their ability to turn encounters into experiences. 

There’s nothing quite like reading good, clear explanations of the basic concepts and approaches we focus on here at DBL. Librarians may struggle as they seek to understand and familiarize themselves with design thinking, user experiences and other important elements of a library that delivers a great user experience. That’s why I found Kate Rudder’s interview with Nathan Shedroff to be informative and enlightening on several levels. Shedroff is experience strategist, author, and the Program Chair and founder of the brand new MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. Unlike some of the more technical articles on design thinking and user experience, the interview format makes it possible to learn from an expert who puts the theory into a more practical framework. Here are some snippets from the interview:

Design processes, specifically, approach the challenge to imagine and devise new solutions, in any context, by looking at customers in meaningful ways, integrating data from a variety of sources, and using it as a starting point instead of an ending point. Design respects different kinds of prototyping and iteration, which is an important part of the process.

You don’t have to be a designer to learn to innovate like one, but it helps if you’ve been through the process a few times to understand what to expect and how the process needs to be supported.

Design [with a big “D”]is about how people approach a challenge and develop a solution and, as such, these processes are extendable into almost any domain: interaction design, organizational design, etc. However, most of the time that the word design [with a little “d”] is used, it is often referring to a particular type of design or domain: graphic, industrial, web, interaction, fashion, interior, etc. and it invokes all of the baggage associated with that domain in both the speaker and the listener.

Great designers have processes they rely on to investigate, ideate, prototype, iterate, validate, and communicate that they can employ to validate what their intuition may be leading them to.

Check out the rest of the interview. I think you’ll find it a good learning experience

Every library gets to experience the excitement of developing or acquiring some new product, technology or service. Once most  of the hard work of design and implementation is completed, the fun part happens - letting it loose on the user community. But what’s the best way to do that? The field of instructional systems design make a real science out of this process, and it can involve everything from developing a budget for a release campaign to using a variety of methods to disseminate information about the new - whatever it is - among the community. But I’d like to consider just two possibilities for the product launch: the soft launch and the big blowout.

You might be asking, “Who cares?” or “What does it matter?” It might not make a difference if we knew exactly how our user community would respond or if we were so convinced that our new product or service was going to be a hit that we didn’t need to care about how we released it to the community. But we typically don’t know, so in the face of uncertainty we need to carefully consider our strategies. It’s a bad idea to leave a new product introduction to chance. Library organizations need to make the most of these opportunties - they come around infrequently.

Apple is a good example of a company that uses the big blowout strategy to powerful affect. They use the MacWorld conference as the place and time to launch their newest and biggest products and software. Steve Jobs’ presentation is considered the highlight of the event, and raises incredible anticipation about what Apple will do next. The iPhone was introduced during a big blowout event, and this was months before it was available. It was a huge hype-generating campaign, and it achieved exactly what it was intended to - massive technophile interest. But there are thousands of other products and services that go public in a different way. Mainstream movies are often first viewed in limited screenings so the producers can guage audience reactions and decide if the first iteration needs revision. They might remake the first scenes or the ending, based on audience reaction.

So what if anything can libraries learn about the relative merits of big blowouts or soft launches. There’s no question that far more buzz can be generated with a big blowout. The introduction of a federated search product or a newly renovated section of the building can generate lots of hoopla. It might even serve as the core of a new branding exercise. But for a new service that might be less well understood, an institutional repository for example, a soft launch may provide more opportunity to get the word out to users who can help to make or break a new product or service. There’s no question that the soft launch is a safer method, because if there is uncertainty about the product or service’s quality the soft launch can allow more opportunity for tweaks.

From a design perspective I tend to prefer the soft launch. While prototyping can help to refine the product or service to the point where it’s ready for the launch, there’s no doubt that a few details were probably overlooked or something obviously in error isn’t being seen; sometimes only the end users can capture those faults. A subtle mention in the library blog or throwing up a link on the home page, along with targeted messages to core stakeholders, makes the soft launch a far less complex process and it keeps the pressure for success at a lower level. None of this activity need preclude a more hyped announcement after the soft launch has accomplished its task.

Does my approach sound too risk adverse? It might be. I can understand why big corporations need big blowouts, and I am not sure libraries can accrue the same benefits. I think there might be better ways and different events to keep the library at the forefront of the user’s mind in a landscape crowded with hype and big announcements. Perhaps the bottom line for making a choice depends on local strategies for designing a better library. Which approach, the soft launch or big blowout, does a better job of fitting into the overall design scheme? From my perspective the soft launch contributes more to the users’ library experience in the long run through better design of library services and practices. There’s no question the big blowout can deliver better on the WoW Factor though, and that’s something to consider. Timing can be a factor as well. I think it always benefits the library to have something significant to announce at the start of a new academic year in order to generate some buzz - and to demonstrate the library is no static operation - but is it worth it to rush the release of something new before it’s ready for primetime? It can be a tough call. What method do you prefer to use at your library?

Two things are on my mind lately. I’ve written previously about what would constitute a good user experience for a library user, and I continue to explore how we could make this happen for our local library user community. But to do accomplish that I’ve also been thinking about what holds us back from reaching our great experience goals. One barrier that emerges again and again is our traditional library rules culture. We have so many rules and policies that we have to search our own web sites to find them when a rule check is required. How does this contrast with the rules environment our users experience in the retail environment?

Have it your way! No rules, just fun! But when you get to the library - “You want that book for another loan period. Sorry, the rules say you can only renew it twice.” I just finished reading The Starbucks Experience, and while the book is by no means one of the best I’ve read on user experience, a librarian reading the book would immediately sense the significant difference between a Starbucks and a library - even the libraries selling coffee. When it comes to their customers, Starbucks doesn’t have rules.  I’ve gone in Starbucks and asked for a small coffee in the medium cup, so I can add milk. Guess what? There’s no cup size rule. I’m sure Starbucks, like all service organizations, has policies that dictate the delivery of customer service. But the difference is that Starbucks employees are empowered to bend, break or shatter the rules if that’s what it takes to deliver a great experience to the consumer.

There are good reasons to institute some rules in our libraries. If study rooms are in significant demand during the exam study period, imposing a time limit can create equitable access to the rooms. That’s a case when a rule makes sense because it does try to allow a good experience to be shared among the community. Where rules break down the experience is when they are used to frustrate users and inhibit their ability to use the library. For example, a student group has already signed up for and used a study room earlier in the day. Now they want to use a study group again in the afternoon. The library rules clearly state only one room per day per group. So they don’t get the room. But there are three study rooms that aren’t being used, so they want to know why they can’t use one. What happens now? Will the library staff member stick to the rule for fear of being disciplined for breaking one or put a commitment to giving those users a great library experience ahead of the rule book?

I suppose the outcome depends on how much effort is made at that library to empower all staff members to  adjust the rules and policies as needed to accommodate and satisfy the library user. That seems to be the conversation we need to begin having in our libraries if we are to change our rules culture. To my way of thinking the first step is to shift the library culture from one that’s designed around the needs of the library administrators and staff to maintain control over the collections and facility, to a culture that is designed around a focus on delivering great library experiences to the user community. Until we take that first step collectively as a library staff, we will have little success in changing our rules culture. 

It had to happen sooner or later. A business journalist decided it was time to burst the design thinking bubble. Does she succeed? Lara Lee, in a BusinessWeek article titled “Innovation at Risk” writes:

There’s a belief in some quarters that design can keep innovation relevant—that applying design thinking to our biggest business problems will deliver sustainable growth. “If we can just get business people to think more like designers,” the argument goes, “we’ll get them out of their linear, analytical boxes and inspire them to generate novel, customer-centered solutions that will drive new growth.” The problem with this thinking is twofold: First, it paints businesspeople who aren’t designers as uncreative and inattentive to customer needs. Worse, it runs the risk of overpromising what design thinking can deliver, which is a surefire way to undermine the role of design, and innovation, in creating new business value.

She goes on to compare design thinking with a previous business infactuation with strategic planning, and states that most companies did just as well with strategic planning as without it.

It’s certainly reasonable to question what design thinking can contribute to business practices, and Lee isn’t the first person to suggest that design thinking has all the makings of another business fad. On further reading one sees that Lee isn’t trashing design thinking. Rather she’s simply stating that its proponents must be careful about overpromising what it can deliver. Remember, the librarian-designer’s mantra should be ”underpromise and overdeliver” - not the other way around.

While I view design thinking as more than just the innovation tool that Lee suggests it is, I do think it’s wise to avoid presenting it as a panacea for all that ails libraries. At DBL I think we’ve been thoughtful about how we view and present design thinking. Along with strategic planning, team-based organizations, identity branding and other methods being used in libraries to promote better user experiences, design thinking has its role to play in providing a mental process and practice approach for frontliners and administrators. I agree with Sherry Bailey’s recent comment here that more examples of good design thinking practice are needed, and we’ll be working to identify and promote them.

I have no intention of turning my DBL posts into some version of the user experience police, but I might on occasion point to what could be a bogus use of the UX concept. Whether it might be because the use in case is an example of pointless bandwagon jumping, total misuse of the concept or just some shameless effort to get attention with the concept, you could be reading about it here. But since I’m not always entirely certain myself as to what great library user experiences might be - that’s a practice still in evolution - perhaps critically analyzing some different ways in which UX is being applied in library settings can help to further define just what is a great library user experience - be it using the library facility, a library instructional product or some other library-related resource.

Seeing the spread of ideas about design thinking and user experience in the library profession is something I generally look forward to as a positive development. But I just had my first encounter with a library product vendor (in the role of an article author) applying the term “user experience” as a way to describe what the product delivers. I’m not so sure I’m feeling positive about this use of UX. It reminds me of the Ziggy cartoon where the diner menu says “chili - $2.50…”the chili experience - $4.00″.

 I would first question the title “User Experience in the Library: A Case Study” as potentially misleading. The discussion hardly deals with a library user experience at all, but instead focuses rather narrowly on OPAC overlay products, in particular the one produced by the author’s firm. The author, Tamar Sedeh works for Ex Libris, and the article is largely about Primo, Ex Libris’ OPAC overlay. For example, Sedeh writes: “The Primo system includes metasearching as an integral part of the user experience.” I haven’t asked them, but I wonder if most end-users’ idea of a user experience would match the author’s.

What concerns me about an article like this, though I suspect it won’t reach a large audience, is its potential to mislead library professionals about user experience and what it is. Again, I’m just learning about this myself, but I don’t think UX is what happens when library users search OPACs, even those with more user friendly designed overlays. However, searching library systems, if they are simple and give good results consistently, could be one part of the totality of a great library user experience. After all, what if the library OPAC does provide a great experience, and then the user goes to the stacks and can’t understand how to find the book by its call number, or the stacks are in terrible condition - and there’s no way to get on-the-spot help. At that point the user probably won’t be having such a great experience at the library.

 But I believe this author makes the error of confusing usability - which is largely discussed in this article - and user experience. They are not the same. Think of it like this. The iPod, most of us would agree, is a highly usable electronic device - intuitive, simple, reliable - and I don’t think most of us would confuse an iPod with a library OPAC.  The iPod is a good example of a device for the age of the user experience. But the iPod, by itself, is only a part of the overall user experience. The experience is all that Apple offers as part of being an iPod owner - iTunes, shopping at the iTunes store, the coolness of showing off your iPod, or more recently your iTouch. It is, in some ways, about the totality of the experience. Think back to what Dr. Gribbons had to say about this:

Usability is often isolated in development units, whereas companies who are getting UX right these days are talking about the user experience at the very top levels within the organization - not just in the tech and development shops. This leads to a more complete integration of the user experience with UX as a foundation as opposed to an afterthought. 

While the DBL blog team certainly is doing what it can to expand the library community’s knowledge about design thinking and great library user experiences, I have my apprehensions about those who will simply slap the phrase “user experience” on library-related job descriptions, services or products the same way that corporations will slap the word “organic” or “homemade” on products that are manufactured by mahines in assembly lines. Just putting the label on something doesn’t make it the real thing.

We certainly can’t eliminate innappropriate or misleading applications of user experience in librarianship, but we can continue to point them out as potentially bad examples that are worthy of our analysis. We might even use them to further our own understanding and appreciation of the meaning of a great library user experience. If you think I’m displaying some arrogance here, let me know. I may not know as much as I think about user experience, and perhaps I’m not qualified to be critical of other librarians or product vendors who co-opt the phrase for their own purposes. Read the article and see what you think - and then share your thoughts.