A timeline of our ethnography and design work at the University of York, encompassing four UX (User Experience) Projects. Includes the changes we've made to services and space as a result of the fieldwork we've undertaken, and our strategy for dissemination.

1. starting small and scaling up
UX at York
UXLibs I
Summer UX
PGRUX
Understanding Academics
UX Space
@ned_potter
#nclxux

2. UXLibs I
The adventure begins at
the first User Experience in
Libraries Conference, 2015

3. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms

4. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing

5. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We came away with a lot but uppermost
in our minds were the 5 main ethnographic
methods

6. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?
We came away with a lot but uppermost
in our minds were the 5 main ethnographic
methods

7. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?
We came away with a lot but uppermost
in our minds were the 5 main ethnographic
methods

8. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We kept coming back to the 5 main
ethnographic methods, we wanted to try
them out
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?

9. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We kept coming back to the 5 main
ethnographic methods, we wanted to try
them out
So we got in a UX
Intern, Emma Gray
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?

10. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We kept coming back to the 5 main
ethnographic methods, we wanted to try
them out
So we got in a UX
Intern, Emma Gray
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?
Which led to our first project…

11. We sent 5 staff from different teams, including
Academic Liaison, Customer Services, and Comms
3 days of intense UXing
We kept coming back to the 5 main
ethnographic methods, we wanted to try
them out
So we got in a UX
Intern, Emma Gray
We were
enthused, excited,
we believed in UX;
but it was hard to
shake the feeling
of, oh god what do
we DO though?
Summer UX

12. Summer
UX
2 month project led from within Academic Liaison
Fieldwork conducted by our UX Intern
What can we learn from 5 ethnographic techniques?
The format
The aims
Create a UX Toolkit for future projects
Focus on PGRs and PGTs

13. Observations
Touchstone Tours
Cognitive Maps
Love & Break-up Letters
Unstructured Interviews

14. (TOP TIP: Don’t underestimate the importance of Cognitive Map coding)

15. Emma started off with Observation and Behavioural Mapping to familiarise herself the library and our
users. Then we recruited students – 25 in total – who each took her in a Touchstone Tour, drew a Cognitive
Map of the Library, and this was used as the foundation of the Unstructured Interview. At the end the
students wrote a Love Letter or a Break-up Letter to a library service. Each session took around an hour.

16. Emma started off with Observation and Behavioural Mapping to familiarise herself the library and our
users. Then we recruited students – 25 in total – who each took her in a Touchstone Tour, drew a Cognitive
Map of the Library, and this was used as the foundation of the Unstructured Interview. At the end the
students wrote a Love Letter or a Break-up Letter to a library service. Each session took around an hour.
Emma was with us for 125 hours so the work conformed to the 4:1 ratio of analysis-to-fieldwork – she spent
25 hours with students, and around 100 hours preparing, processing, analysing, writing up the data and
recommending changes.

17. Emma also created a UX Toolkit to help us with future projects. This was a Google Drive folder which
included, for each technique: examples, consent forms, her experiences and recommendations, what
worked and what didn’t, and further reading she recommended or found particularly useful.
If you’re interested click here to see the structured introduction we put together to introduce our
interns to Library UX – this contains presentations, blogposts, articles, and books.

18. PGRUXA second UX intern for
PGR only
Targeted departments
Smaller pool

19. Love & Break-up Letters
Unstructured Interviews
Cognitive Maps

20. The second project was more
stripped down. We employed
Oliver Ramirez as our UX Intern
over a period of around three
months.
PGRUX focused only on
Postgraduate Researchers. We
targeted the Departments they
came from (choosing Depts with
the most and least satisfied
students based on the PRES)
and used fewer ethnographic
techniques with them.
The analysis-to-fieldwork ratio
here was more like 6:1.

21. Service tweaks

22. Service tweaks
We added a hot water drinking tap
We put some whiteboards in a new
PGR space to help foster community
One area of the library used to
close at 10pm which put people
off using it – we made it 24hrs
access in line with the rest of the
building.
We changed
various
aspects of
YorSearch,
the Library
Catalogue

23. This included the terminology we used to describe
materials available online and in the library, and
displaying classmarks in the search results screen
rather than only when people clicked on an item

24. We gave students
blankets to use in
our main campus
library, and the
one in Kings
Manor in the
centre of the City,
and the one in
York Minster.
These latter
buildings are old
(c. 500 years and
c. 1400 years
respectively) – so
they get quite
chilly.
The blankets
have been
incredibly
popular! If you
can add blankets
to your library,
do…

25. We’ve also added a Graffiti Wall which has proved so popular all other feedback mechanisms have tailed off

26. UNDERSTANDING
ACADEMICS
A huge up-scaling for Academic Liaison doing the fieldwork
100 academics involved
1 month prep, 2 months fieldwork, 6 weeks
data processing, 2 weeks assigning of themes,
several months writing up and designing changes

27. Cognitive Maps
Semi-structured Interviews

28. This project was by far the
biggest we’ve done.
We asked academics to draw
cognitive maps that were not
geographical but process based:
a map of their process for
creating a new module, or
running a research project.
After they’d drawn the maps
they talked us through their
process – this usually took
around 15 minutes and was
hugely revealing. That then
formed the basis of the interview
which followed.
We learned so much that
analysis and improvements are
still emerging and being
implemented now.

29. Service tweaks

30. Service tweaks
(with plenty more
to come as we
near the final
project report)
We changed the way our Flexible Loans work for academics
We used their
feedback to
inform our
choice of a
new Reading
List system
We changed the way
we communicate key
information to academics
We changed the way we manage our annual
review of journal and database subscriptions

31. UX
SPACE
A year long project called
Will run for all of 2017
Primary focus on two spaces
We’ll be led by the data!

32. Behavioural mapping, but modified…
‘Final’ generative* project for now –
need to move to evaluative* research
*(Generative research establishes what the problems are,
evaluative research tests potential solutions)

33. [Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone]
We’ve tried to share as much as possible about our work with as many different
types of audience as possible. From internal reports to regular blogposts to talks
like this one for a library UX community to presentations entirely outside the world
of libraries. We also try really hard with the slides in case they get picked up by
Slideshare and featured on their homepage, which can exponentially amplify how
far you reach. User Experience in libraries is still a relatively new field, so it’s
important that we all share our experiences and our impact.
A strategic approach to dissemination

34. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone]

35. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone]

36. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone]

37. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone]

38. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone!]

39. A strategic approach to dissemination
[Internal] [Library industry] [Lib UX Community] [Specialists] [Outside HE] [Anyone!]

40. if you want to try this
at your institution
Next steps

41. 1. Choose a
space or a
demographic
2. Start with some
observation then progress
from there

42. 1. Choose a
space or a
demographic
2. Start with some
observation then progress
from there
3. Use cognitive maps as
a jumping off point for
the interviews
4. Design some changes.
Rapid prototyping…

43. 1. Choose a
space or a
demographic
2. Start with some
observation then progress
from there
3. Use cognitive maps as
a jumping off point for
the interviews
4. Design some changes.
Rapid prototyping…
5. SHARE YOUR
FINDINGS!

44. you can read about all our UX work
at York on the Lib-Innovation blog:
libinnovation.blogspot.com
@ned_potter
thanks for watching

45. With the exceptions of the screenshots and screengrabs captured for this presentation,
the images in these slides are CC0, sourced via iconfinder, pixabay and pexels
credits