User Experience and Libraries: A shared introduction

Date: 05/05/2015

Location: Du Bois Library, Room 2601, UMass Libraries at UMass Amherst

Description: 

The User Experience Committee hosted an event: User Experience and Libraries: A Shared Introduction, for Five College’s library staff. We started with light refreshments, before a brief introduction to User Experience concepts and methods given by Sika Berger.

Participants chose between two break-out sessions, showing talks from the recent Designing for Digital Conference in Austin, Texas.

The following two sessions were

How do students *really* do research? Revelations from the “Research Confession Booth”

Presenters: Odile Harter and Emily Singley of Harvard University
(slides)

The Great Website Redesign Balancing Act: Walking the Tightrope from Idea to Launch

Presenters: Rick Cecil, Director of User Experience, Bluespark Labs and Courtney Greene McDonald, Head of Discovery & Research Services, Indiana University
(slides)

Each group watched one video presentation, then discussed the content as it applied to our situations. We then re-grouped to share out the main ideas of our breakout discussions and wrap up the event.

Several committee members felt that what we heard from people during the event pointed to an opportunity to have something around various methods of collecting user feedback and how to implement them.

An idea was suggested for a reading group of people interested in the topic. Possibly meeting monthly to discuss articles and books about user experience.

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