Usability and user experience in academic libraries. Mine mostly.
I started this blog when my job title was the very long and very silly “Systems Librarian — Web, Communications, and Interface Design.” I was doing UX work related to the “web” part of that title and then expanded to non-web-related UX, joking that I took “interface design” to include the interface between users and … Continue reading Farewell to UX
I found it really difficult to come with a title for the UXLibs plenary talk I gave earlier this year. I eventually called it “More Than Just Working Together: Reflections on UX Work and Collaboration” and then retitled it during the talk to “It’s Not Just You.” At the time, I wrote down a list … Continue reading Rejected titles for my 2023 UXLibs plenary talk
Usage stats are great and everything, but have you tried non-usage stats? This is approximately what I said in my lightning talk at the Access Conference, October 25, 2023. In summer 2022 I got it into my head that I wanted to look at not what people use on the website, but what they don’t … Continue reading Access 2023 Conference Lightning Talk
Plenary talk from UXLibs 2023, reflecting on research into structures and supports for UX work, ultimately concluding that there is no magical structure or set of supports that will set everyone up for success.
This is the text (approximately) of my presentation from the virtual Access conference on Oct.19, 2020, “Web librarians who do UX: We are so sad, we are so very very sad.” Last year, I was doing interviews with library people who do User Experience work and noticed that people who were primarily focused on the … Continue reading Web Librarians Who Do UX: Access presentation
I can’t stop thinking about the situation at TPL. The short version is that the library has accepted a room rental from an anti-trans speaker, and despite outcry from trans people and their allies, despite a petition and a boycott by writers, despite their own policy on room rentals not allowing events that promote discrimination, … Continue reading The TPL Debacle: Values vs People
An article in the Globe and Mail this spring about resilience was a breath of fresh air—no talk about “grit” or bootstraps or changing your own response to a situation. It was written by Michael Ungar, the Canada Research Chair in Child, Family, and Community Resilience at Dalhousie University and leader of the Resilience Research … Continue reading Library Workers and Resilience: More Than…
I’m on a year-long sabbatical as of July 1 and excited to get started on a few different research projects. For two of the projects, I’m going to need some help from the UXLibs/LibUX community. In one of them, I want to look at love letters that users have written to academic libraries so I … Continue reading Research projects: Call for help
Five years of UXLibs – hurrah! Let’s dive straight in. Barriers to UX Design: Andy Priestner Andy kicked off the conference with his address about why he thinks not many of us are moving beyond research reports when it comes to doing UX work in our libraries: We see research as the finish line. UX … Continue reading UXLibsV: Notes
As I mentioned in my last post, we’re doing a design refresh of our library website, with a goal to make it “beautiful.” As such, we’re not touching much of the organization. But of course we have to pay attention to not just how the information is categorized but also where it appears on the … Continue reading Website Refresh: First Round of Iterative Testing