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.

Images:

When a few colleagues and I launched Designing Better Libraries in February 2007, I was pleased to have the opportunity to introduce to the library profession a new blog dedicated to exploring and discussing two important concepts, design thinking and user experience. Since then DBL has regularly shared ideas and resources about how design thinking and user experience may be applied in libraries to create a better user experience. We hope this has inspired some of our readers to contemplate practicing these ideas in their own libraries, and I personally appreciate being invited by a variety of library groups to come and speak about design thinking and user experience. But back in 2007, as this blog was originally conceived to promote new ideas then virtually unknown to the profession, I was convinced they would resonate with others, and I anticipated that in time those librarians would pick up the torch and spread these ideas through their own writings. I believe that is now coming to fruition.

Just a few weeks ago my good colleague Pete Bromberg, familiar to some of you as a blogger for Library Garden (just named one of the 10 blogs to read in 2010) wrote an excellent post at ALA Learning about creating a great user experience for learners. I’ve had a draft post brewing about creating a user experience for library learners for some time now, and am still thinking this through. Bromberg was clearly inspired by the Jesse James Garrett video on the state of user experience, as he identified four ways to engage learners in giving them a great experience. I know that Pete is interested in UX, and has even organized some staff development programs related to the topic, so it was great to see him writing about it – and his mention of DBL is greatly appreciated. Then a few days later, Stephen Abram wrote a post on his blog about user experience that pointed to Bromberg’s post. Given the wide readership of Stephen’s Lighthouse I’m sure that helped to further spread the word about UX.

I expect that a new development will be more significant in spreading the word about UX to the library community, and I hope that my recent American Libraries article about user experience (“From Gatekeepers to Gateopeners“) has contributed to that process as well. Library Journal, one of our profession’s mainstream practitioner publications, has introduced a new column dedicated to user experience called “The User Experience” (you can’t get much more direct than that). I was also pleased to see that LJ has chosen Aaron Schmidt to write this column. I had the pleasure of working with Aaron a few years ago on a Soaring to Excellence program about web 2.0 for libraries. Aaron is well recognized in the library profession as one of our more innovative thinkers about how to better serve the library user community through improved usability and design. I’m sure he’ll do a great job with the column, and I’ll look forward to reading future entries – and I encourage you to read it as well. And it didn’t take long for another well-known blogger, Michael Stephens, to spread the word about Aaron’s new LJ column on UX via his widely read Tame the Web blog.

When you add up these recent events I think it points to a growing awareness and acceptance of the importance of user experience in creating better libraries. What I am not hearing in these conversations is a parallel recognition of design thinking, and how it is important in helping to design staged user experiences. As in so many other things, a great user experience is the outcome of a thoughtful design process that incorporates, among other things, totality, meaning and relationships. I hope that other librarians will be inspired by this growing cadre of library colleagues spreading the word about user experience – and that they will make Designing Better Libraries a part of their personal learning experience.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of the disruptive innovation that was introduced by Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen. The gist of the disruptive innovation (or technology) is that all organizations have potential competitors that can take their market share based on creating a new idea, product or service that will offer more value to the individual. I often offer the Internet search engine as a disruptive technology/innovation that radically changed the world for traditional libraries. Where individuals once frequently consulted libraries for the answers to factual questions (e.g., the population of Ghana, the year the Magna Carta was signed, etc.), anyone with an Internet connection now routinely uses a search engine to find the answers to these questions on their own. There are many other examples of disruptive innovation and technology.

Does this idea of creating a disruption that displaces a traditional competitor apply to the user experience? According to an article that appeared in the 2009 issue of Strategy & Leadership (v. 39 No. 6), the answer is yes. [Note - if you are unable to access this article, here is a similar but older one] What initially caught my attention is that one of this article’s co-authors is B. Joseph Pines, who co-authored The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre, a seminal work in the field of user experience. So naturally I wanted to see what new ideas Pines is discussing. According to the authors:

Many of the successful innovations of the past several decades – like Starbucks – involve customers spending more time with the company, time that has special value. Think of it as competing on the basis of ‘‘time well spent.’’ Across a wide variety of industries – food, entertainment, and travel destinations, to name a few – companies increasingly embrace the view that economic value can be generated in creating a meaningful experience for customers. In experience innovation, it’s especially important to get the job that customers want done right, because getting it wrong entails unique risks.

The premise of the article is that businesses based on the “simple-cheap-convenient” model can be effectively disrupted by those firms that offer experience innovations. Using Walt Disney as a case study, this article shows how the ultimate experience company was lulled into complacency in the 70s and 80s until a new firm, Pixar, disrupted what had become Walt Disney’s more formulaic approach to animated films by crafting better stories that “out-imagined” Disney’s own “imagineering” techniques. In this industry, technology certainly mattered for Pixar, but ultimately it was experience innovation that made the difference:

Note how in this example the formula so prevalent in manufactured goods and delivered services – simple-cheap-convenient – did not determine the outcome of the rivalry. Pixar developed better technology, which enabled it to tell better stories, which resulted in better movies. In sum, more people wanted to spend more time watching the Pixar movies. Certainly disruptions will continue to occur based on the simple-cheap-convenient triumvirate, but companies increasingly should look for innovation opportunities in staged experiences – whether in physical venues such as Starbucks or virtual realms such as Pixar movies – where customers seek to spend more time with such innovators, not less.

What it comes down to is that the simple-cheap-convenient companies focus on getting functional jobs done for their customers. Just give them what they want, no more and no less. But the innovators of disruptive experiences focus on getting the emotional and social jobs done for customers. The authors provide three rules for disruptive experience innovation.

Rule 1: If you promise to address an emotional need it’s risky to fail to deliver. Trying to establish your organization as one that emphasizes the emotional or social experience over the convenient-functional one will fail if all you ultimately deliver is a functional job. In other words, deliver the experience innovation you promise. If you and your colleagues want to position your library as the community resource where the members can establish a relationship with someone who cares about helping them satisfy their information need, then you need to be careful that everyone on staff buys into that idea. It would only take a few emotionless, functional job-based interactions to cause the members to lose faith in the library as a relationship builder.

Rule 2: Think sequence of events. Remember that experiences are designed and staged. If you think all your library does is offer a transaction that delivers a service or access to content then it will be difficult to imagine what you could offer in the way of an emotional or social experience. When the stakes for finding critical information are high, be it a research paper that makes the difference between passing and failing or a funding proposal that means the difference between staying in or going out of business, you know it’s an emotional, gut-wrenching experience. Helping an individual find the best possible information should be more than a transaction. As the authors suggest, “Instead of looking for ways to eliminate time on a task or streamline touch points with customers, they must seek to understand what series of events proves most meaningful to customers and how to design the time spent to maximize the value people get out of that time.”

Rule 3: Be intentional in order to close the promise-making gap. The bottom line is that if you want to create a disruptive library experience you must pay attention to the details that signal to the members of the user community that you really do want to spend time with them. If you promote the library as a third place for research, for connections with cultural and social events and as a place where you can build relationships with research experts, then prepare to deliver on it. Failing to do so will cause a further deterioration of the trust that the user community places in the library.

Perhaps you see librarianship and the end-goal of the library as simply a functional, transactional operation. The users only want to get to databases so they can get articles and books. They don’t care about the library or the programs it offers. They don’t care about the librarians and the expertise they offer. They don’t want an emotional bond with the library. They just want the content – pure and simple – and our job is to make that simple, cheap and convenient. That view has its supporters, both in the world of libraries and in the world of business. For an example of the latter, read this post about Ryanair by Gerry McGovern. It may reinforce your belief that the user community just wants the library to be a commodity. If you really believe that, maybe you should start charging fees for access to the bathroom at your library. Then fire yourself, close the library building and simply commit the entire library budget to the purchase of content that can be accessed simply and conveniently. But if you aren’t quite prepared to take those steps, then you just might consider whether a disruptive library experience could be what your user community really wants and needs in an age of information abundance.

We’ve all heard again and again how important it is to offer good customer service at your library. Here at DBL I’ve stressed that a great library user experience is hardly achievable without paying attention to customer service. Do an Internet search on “customer service library” and see how many library-based customer service policies you turn up, not to mention library pundits emphasizing its importance. But when expectations are heightened and the competition for attention ratchets up, good or even great customer service may be too little. What exactly do people want when good customer service seems insufficient?

Perhaps some lessons could be learned by looking to the retail industry. After a dismal 2008 holiday season owing to the recession when only deep discounts could attract customers, things were looking decidedly uncertain for 2009. But instead of depending only on price cuts, retailers of all types, from the most elegant to the most mundane, decided to ramp up customer service into new territory. Stores with reputations for amazing customer service, such as Nordstrom and Bergdorf Goodman, are rethinking how to show customers their business is truly appreciated. According to an article from the NYT a visible shift is in place:

With signs that this holiday shopping season will not be much better than the last, retailers of all stripes are looking for new ways to make shopping more pleasant. There are improvements not only at fancy stores, but also at mall chains like J. Crew, Gap and Macy’s…Many retailers have been soliciting feedback in person and online as they try to improve the overall shopping experience…Recent surveys from several research firms show consumers continue to rate fashion retailers poorly on customer service…A report entitled the Retail Service Quality Index, released Dec. 1, rated the service in luxury stores like Nordstrom, Bergdorf and Saks as no better than what was found in home improvement stores like Lowe’s and Ace Hardware…“Retailers are very good at the sales transaction,” Mr. Miller said, “but they are not very good at building sales relationships. If I am not going to get service that is any different walking into Wal-Mart as walking into Nordstrom, why would I go to Nordstrom?”

What’s a library to do when consumers are no longer impressed by the customer service at Nordstrom, and are less likely to differentiate the service at a Wal-Mart from a high-priced, less convenient competitor? As long as members of the library’s user community have to go out of their way to get to the library and its more complex online content, it would hardly surprise us if they opted for a lower quality but more convenient resource – no matter how much we smile when they check out a book or answer a reference question. What is making a difference?

As the above quote suggests, building relationships can make a difference. That doesn’t mean librarians now need to get to know every member of the user community on a personal basis, although the more we know our users by name and affiliation the better we can be at establishing meaningful relationships with them. Even the retailers are trying harder. As some stores, as the article reports, they are getting beyond just starting transactions with “Can I help you” or “Do you have a question”. They try to be more conversational by offering comments that are more engaging such as “That’s a great looking sweater” and they also get out from behind sales registers to help customers on the floor. One customer who received personalized service made the following comment: “The same saleswoman came right over and asked, ‘How are you enjoying the bag?’ ” she said. “I was totally impressed.” Relationships are built when we remember those we helped and follow up with them to show our interest.

In our libraries there are many opportunities to start a conversation and build a relationship. Take a moment to ask someone you have recently assisted if he or she found what they needed, if their research project turned out well or if a recommended book or video was enjoyed. Good customer service will continue to be important, but we need to place more emphasis on getting beyond the basics of “may I help you” and “let me know if you need more help”. As struggling retailers are learning, good customer service rarely sets you apart from anyone else in a crowded and competitive marketplace. Their goal is to convert “users” into “loyal community members”. That sounds like a strategy that is right for the times and right for libraries.

Continuous improvement is an often sought after goal in libraries. We may be doing good things for our community but resting on our laurels is no formula for future success. It’s important to keep exploring for new ways to enhance the library experience for the end user. A simple way to do that is by making sure we are skilled practitioners of listening and observing. When we do this well we may be amazed at the many great ideas for innovative services that are rooted in what we hear from the library users (and non-users) and in the ways we observe their use of our facilities, collections and services.

In user experience presentations I often mention this simple idea of “listen and observe” , but I was reminded of it by this blog post by Jeffrey Phillips over at Innovate on Purpose. In discussing “How Customer Insights Lead to Innovations” Phillips offers some good examples of how this practice can make a difference. Take the Crayola “Crayon Maker”. Phillips points out that for many years parents and children melted down broken crayons at home so they could shape them into new ones. Crayola picked up on this activity and developed a product that offers the same capability but makes it easier to do.

Here’s another anecdote I came across. Makers of body shampoo wanted to learn more about how men use the product. When they just asked questions in focus groups they heard the attendees answer without thinking much about how they really use the products. But in a study where men were observed using the product the market research folks discovered most men used the body shampoo to shampoo their hair. In the focus groups, no one said anything about this. Now when you go to the supermarket you see body shampoo for men that is also marketed as hair shampoo in one bottle. It’s probably the same shampoo it was before, but this innovation based on observation has increased the market share of these all-in-one products.

listen and observe for innovation inspiration

While “listen and observe” is easy advice to give, it is a challenge to implement as a regular practice. We are often so used to being in our own little world that it is hard to notice when something different happens that should signal to us that we’ve just seen or heard something worthy of our attention. It is, I think, a personal behavioral trait that makes innovators who they are. They are the folks who have their antennae up, ready to pick up the signals that communicate something important is happening. They are listening and observing. It’s no different with individuals who have a talent for identifying totally unrelated events or trends, and who have the ability to connect them – to put the puzzle pieces together – in predicting new expectations and trends – before people even realize it’s something they want or need.

How to get started? Visualize yourself as that person who has the antennae up and ready to gather the signals. Practice your listening and observing when you are outside the library. Be a people watcher when you go to stores and restaurants. Look for unusual or odd behaviors that indicate people want something that isn’t readily available. When people complain or whine about something, don’t just ignore them or take the fastest, shortest route to making them go away. Instead think about why they are complaining or whining – or simply asking why they can’t do something they want to do at your library. Watch how your library users make use of the facility, the equipment or the technology. It may be only one time out of a hundred or a thousand that you will notice something unusual, but it’s that one time that could make all the difference in the world to you, your colleagues and the members of your library community. So get those antennae up and get out there!

One of the core components of creating a unique user experience is making it clear to the end user or customer that a product or service is differentiated from competitors so that it compels the individual to seek out this different experience. At DBL we’ve discussed the importance of identifying ways to differentiate the library. From the end-user perspective, what is it about the library that makes it different and unique from all other potential sources of information – especially the ones that are more convenient to use.

One of the challenges librarians face is that their primary product, information, is a commodity that is difficult to differentiate. It used to be that academic libraries could emphasize their scholarly content as different from what search engines offered, but Google Scholar changed all that. The end user perceives all information as relatively the same, especially when they can find it on their own, and it all seems to relate to the question or topic of choice. And even if it isn’t the highest quality information, if finding it is convenient and fast then it’s good enough.

The Branding Strategy blog explores how one might go about differentiating or branding a commodity. In fact, one of the bloggers there, Brad VanAuken, said “I am a firm believer that everything can be branded/differentiated. I have never encountered a product or service that I could not brand/differentiate”. In that same post he provided some examples of branding products for differentiation. In a more recent post VanAuken wrote more specifically about how to differentiate commodities. Commodities, like the information contained in articles and books, is difficult to differentiate. What is different about the information found in a book in the local public library and the same or a similar book found online via Google books or Amazon?

The answer is nothing, at least nothing much different than the vodka found in bottles from two different companies, or for that matter much of the water sold in plastic bottles. Can you really taste the difference between two brands? But why does one brand command a higher price and why do more consumers know the name or can recite its tagline? The reason is differentiation. It’s the same thing with information. It may be the same but one provider may have more brand recognition, another may offer great convenience and yet another may deliver unique packaging. Libraries offer books and other information for free. You’d think that would be a significant and desirable differentiating factor. But when you factor in questionable convenience, difficulty finding out what the library offers and some complexity in getting to the information, free looks like less of a bargain. Then again, the vodka example shows consumers will pay more if they believe they are getting higher quality or more value for their money. But will they go to more trouble and spend more valuable time to get it?

So what advice does VanAuken offer for how to differentiate any commodity? Some are the sort of things you’d expect: superior quality control; great customer service; best range of product availability. While all of these would be desirable for any library, doing them all well in order to compete with an Amazon or Barnes & Noble could be quite a challenge. He also says that one way to differentiate with commodities is to identify unique categories of customers and focus on meeting their unique needs. This is one area in which libraries of all types might be most successful. We often know our user segments (children, teens, college students, professionals), and we often know more about them and their research needs than the competition.

One way in which libraries, particularly academic libraries, might differentiate their information is to better connect the end user with highly specialized resources that may be linked to a specific issue or discipline. The same could be said for the mostly unique content in special collections. While Google is digitizing these unique materials from its library partners’ collections, there still remains much that is unique and valuable for differentiation. Promoting these unique databases and collections will present a challenge since they have small numbers of potential users. But reaching these smaller groups, over time, can convert to a large user base. We are challenged to differentiate the library’s core commodity – raw information – but as VanAuken says, “Everything can be branded/differentiated.”