User Experience

How can we make sure our activities and services are truly user-centred?

Members of the BC User Experience Interest Group (BC UXIG) will briefly share highlights and strategies from some recent projects, then lead this lively and active workshop where you'll stretch your imagination and build some UX-perspective muscles.

We’ll give most of the time to lively small-group discussions around challenging assumptions and our own “expert” perspectives to bring a more user-centred approach to what we do. Be prepared to dismantle some of your assumptions!

The BC UXIG is an informal grassroots collection of librarians that has been hosting events and workshops around UX for the past five years, including sessions on wayfinding and Google Analytics.

Let’s try it out – Robertson Library actively promotes the Library not only as a research and study environment, but also as a welcoming space for students to relax, engage, learn, and have fun! We offer various outreach events throughout the academic semesters – escape rooms; a stargazing evening; a PJ party; pop-up surprises and a stress free zone with games, crafts, and a photo-booth during the exam period; book, movie, and research talks in collaboration with various campus faculties and departments; Spooktacular tales; an Open Mic evening– to name a few. Discover which events were the most successful!
Learning Objectives:

• Gain new ideas for library outreach events
• Learn which outreach activities were successful and which were not
• Recognize the benefits of collaborative relationships with campus faculties and departments

Let us help you “stand up” for and improve the customer experience (CX) of the groups and individuals that your library serves! Learn how to evaluate the customer experience at your library through the lenses of your customers and staff. This hands-on session will cover design thinking techniques, customer journey mapping, and service blueprinting to devise an exceptional customer experience at your library.
Learning Objectives:

• Understand the value of customer experience (CX) for libraries
• Identify how to assess the CX through the lenses of your customers and staff
• Explore tangible CX techniques to apply at your library

You’ve heard of UX and design thinking, but probably wondered how it related to technology work in libraries. This session combines theory, discussion, and illustrative hands-on activities that will bring that connection to life in a way that applies to public libraries of all sizes. We will provide a brief overview of user centered design and design thinking, framing these both as strategies to understand user needs and as a broader approach that integrates user experience planning into the design and continual improvement of library services. Come learn how design thinking and user centered service design practices are particularly information rich, low-cost approaches to engaging communities in everything from digital literacy instruction to the design of new digital services.

Thu Apr 20 2017, 11:00am–12:15pm, Tuscany Room
 
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Generously Sponsored By: Vancouver Public Library
 
From common stumbling blocks experienced by library patrons to broader challenges facing libraries in the 21st century, this hands-on session provides a practical introduction to service design methodology that can be used to improve the quality of library services and prepare libraries for new services that might lie ahead.
 
Service design is an emerging discipline that combines user research, business strategy, and design practice to innovate the way services are traditionally conceived of and implemented. This methodology is based around interactions with users, touchpoints, service personnel, and stakeholders. It uses design thinking as an approach and follows a structured and organized process.
 
Drawing from our user experience and design expertise, we will highlight case studies of service design and user-centred design in practice with examples from the Vancouver Public Library and in other nontraditional design environments. We introduce participants to processes and strategies that can be used to identify or frame problems, test potential solutions, and implement evidence-based outcomes in their own libraries and communities.
 
Participants will be encouraged to bring their own experiences to the table as they engage in a collaborative design exercise that challenges them to apply these strategies to a real-life service problem in a library setting. Attendees will walk away from this session with a stronger understanding of how service-led approaches that put library users front and centre can powerfully impact the way libraries operate and adapt to change.
 
 
SPEAKERS
Mary B Castellanes, B.Des, Vancouver Public Library Biography: Mary Castellanes is a Web Graphics Designer at Vancouver Public Library with formal training in communication design, who has grown up with libraries very much a part of her life. She is interested in the open nature of web technologies, and the thoughtful application of design in our everyday lives. As a member of the Digital Services Web Team, Mary has been involved in the redesign of VPL.ca. The firsthand observations and feedback gathered from consultation and testing sessions with the public helped inform many of the visual design decisions for the new website.
 
Jessica Whu, MLIS, Vancouver Public Library Biography: Jessica Whu is a Web Librarian at Vancouver Public Library. Most recently, with her work on VPL’s website redesign project, she’s worked with staff across departments to assess and design web content that supports effective service delivery. Jessica loves how her work in information design, web development, and user experience intersect with her passion for people, communities, and user-centred services.