Guiding Special Collections Users Through Multiple Discovery Platforms
Design Lead / Sep 2022 - Apr 2023 / Information Services
Project Type: Senior capstone project (team)
Contributions: Product research, design, evaluation, and recommendations
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Adobe Creative Cloud, Qualtrics,
Project Overview
Context
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Boston Public Library took initiative to make more of their materials available digitally and thus began the long process of adding a variety of items to their digital catalogs. With this came updates and increased usage of the online search system and a need to make Special Collections (one of the platforms that was digitized) more accessible to patrons. BPL currently uses several discovery systems in order to organize their Special Collections materials digitally. This has caused issues wherein patrons are unable to identify different materials and artifacts that they are looking for. Currently, these platforms cannot be unified into a single one, so the goal is to enhance the online navigation experience of the BPL Special Collections website to inform users about the content and capabilities of available platforms.
Business Problem
Improve the online navigation experience of the BPL Special Collections website to inform users about what these unique platforms contain and how they work.
Target Audience
Our primary users are BPL patrons who don’t have previous experience with navigating the department’s corresponding website. Individuals include students, scholars, authors, and artists who are interested in using BPL’s Special Collections.
My Responsibilities
Over the course of my senior capstone project, I contributed to all aspects of the project including research, design, evaluation, and client communication. I was specifically delegated as Record Keeper, Design Lead, and Prototyping Lead.
Planning Process
My team and I began by competing tasks to identify our problem space, scope our project, and document necessary planning information for all project phases:
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Communicated with BPL staff members Eve Neiger and Kathleen Monahan over Slack and Zoom to learn about BPL's Special Collections discovery platforms and to scope our project
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Established project goals and objectives
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Identified relevant stakeholders, resources, and skills as well as project constraints and assumptions
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Broke down Project Timeline with Google Sheets
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Appointed administrative and functional team roles
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Created a detailed Project Planning Report with this information
Research Process
Special collections page on current website
Research Plan and Methodologies
The research methods we used for this project include an online survey and usability testing. Surveys (designed on Qualtrics by my teammate Jason Moy) were sent out to familiar users who were identified as willing to participate in future research by BPL. A QR code link was also posted in the Reading Room at BPL. 9 usability tests/interviews (written by my teammate Dani Vykydal) were conducted with users unfamiliar with the BPL website using the current Special Collections search. These included students at the University of Michigan, family members, and University of Michigan Special Collections librarians. Recruitment was conducted using convenience sampling and email outreach to UMich library staff. In addition to our other research methods, we conducted a heuristic evaluation of the existing Special Collections pages.
Prior to executing our research, we devised a comprehensive Research Plan, detailing user study design and materials.
Research Analysis
After carrying out individual usability testing/interviews, surveys, and heuristic analysis, my team and I organized and examined our data to create affinity diagrams and personas.
Affinity diagram for online survey results
Affinity diagram for usability testing/interview results
Primary persona - familiar BPL patron
Primary persona - BPL staff member
Primary persona - unfamiliar BPL patron
To build empathy with our users, we created several use case scenarios based on various value propositions and took into account our findings from our surveying and usability tests and interviews.
Value propositions and use case scenarios
Design Requirements
From my team's affinity diagrams, user personas, and use case scenarios, we developed UX requirements to lay out our priorities before diving into the design process. These requirements would help inform any future design decisions. These requirements can be found in our Research and Requirements Report.
We broke up requirements into four categories inspired by our affinity groupings: discovery tools navigation requirements, requesting materials requirements, aesthetic and emotional requirements, and general navigation requirements. Each category was organized by high priority, medium priority, and low priority requirements.
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Discovery tools navigation requirements
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One of the main features of the Search & Discover page is the Discovery Tools, the main way for users to find and request what they are looking for. Commonly, users struggled to discern differences between the tools and figuring out which ones to access for their needs. The requirements we established should help address the main paint points we found relating to the clarity and navigation issues with the Discovery Tools.
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Requesting materials requirements
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In order to access Special Collections materials, patrons often need to request to view them in-person in the Reading Room or online. From our testing, we found that there was some confusion regarding where to find additional information on requesting materials as well as with searching for their desired items. The requirements in this section aim to make the system more intuitive for users to find their desired materials and make appointments for the Reading Room.
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Aesthetic and emotional requirements
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Issues regarding organization and overall aesthetic preferences were raised in multiple of our user tests. These requirements aim to address issues with image sizing and clarity, descriptions, organization on the Search & Discover page, and any other adjustments with the intention of making the information more appealing to its users.
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General navigation requirements
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Based on our research results and analysis, general navigation arose as a common theme. This includes issues of finding the Special Collections and Search & Discover pages, looking for information about making Reading Room appointments, and scrolling through the Search & Discover content. To address these navigational issues among Special Collections users, we have developed and prioritized various requirements to make it easier to find desired portions of the website in a timely manner.
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Design Process
Unfiltered Ideation
My team and I started with conducting unfiltered ideation based on our research results to identify potential solutions and improvements that we could incorporate into our redesign. Through this exercise we compiled these various design ideas discussing the ones that we collectively believe would be most effective and in line with our design/UX requirements. We made sure to think about the main concerns of our personas and how users would interact with the new tools.
Design solution ideation categories
Table of findings from ideation session
Sketching
We took these ideas and translated them into wireframe and main screen sketches doing them individually then comparing and discussing them as a group. They were used in order to inform our lo-fi wireframes and prototype by finding common themes and connections that we wanted to use. Our persona needs and use case scenarios also helped inform what common threads and adjustments needed to be made.
Wireframe and main screen sketches
Low and Mid Fidelity Designs
The initial lo-fi prototype was used in a peer critique with other UX students and course professors to get insights on how our designs were progressing. We used these insights to continue working on our prototype and moved into the mid and high fidelity prototypes to be used in user testing and further iterations. Additionally, we were able to get more detailed information from our BPL contacts regarding style guidelines, important design content like logos, and screen measurements to make our prototype closer to pixel-perfect.
We also created a high level user flow for the Special Collections website in order to organize which pages we would be prioritizing (the larger white icons). This allowed us to use our sketches and prior user testing in order to narrow down our scope and focus on the main pages that users were having issues with as well as additional screens to maintain a consistent design throughout the Special Collections site.
BPL high level user flow
Low and mid fidelity wireframes
User Testing on Low and Mid Fidelity Designs
As mentioned above, our mid fidelity prototype used feedback from peers that was then used in conducting user tests before moving on to the high fidelity prototype. For user testing, we used convenience sampling due to time and material constraints. We designed a short user testing script in order to have 4 people evaluate our mid-fidelity prototypes.
Here, we asked users to give their initial impressions of the Figma prototypes compared to the current webpage design. The script asked them to specifically look at the Search & Discover, Special Collections Home, and Plan Your Research Visit pages that we provided our first iterations of. From this part of the user testing, we were able to provide a list of common themes and things that users either liked in our new designs or still found confusing.
Findings from low and mid fidelity testing
Qualitative Assessment
The second part of the user testing further helped address our requirement regarding aesthetic & emotional. It included an image sorting exercise to determine the aspects that make an effective visual. We selected 7-16 images for each of the main Discovery Tools and Departments on Special Collections and asked users to choose the one they thought best represented the category after reading out a brief description of each.
From this, we were able to find some recognizable images to suggest as well as some suggestions for additional photos that BPL can take in the future to improve the images. We late did a second round of qualitative assessment.
Based on our qualitative assessments, the key aspects that contribute to the improvement of the images on the BPL Search & Discover page when it comes to the Discovery Tools and Departments include:
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Warm color scheme/style and editing because it is inviting and what they imagined archival department to look like.
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Interactivity is important because showing people Interact with items is a visual representation of demonstrating what someone would be doing.
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For Digital Commonwealth and Internet Archives logos were effective and help distinguish between the two with the help of a clear description.
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Department images can be more general and should represent a wide variety of materials.
Final Product
Final Design Rationale
Our final prototype design was created using the user testing feedback from our low and mid fidelity models. We also finalized our prototype using additional style guidelines and information given to us from the official BPL website standards in order to ensure cohesion across the Special Collections pages.
In order to address the project and UX requirements, we had a high priority of making sure that users could quickly navigate to Search & Discover and other key pages from the side navigation while making it clear which Discovery Tools were for what purpose. These directly influenced our choices to make the sidebar navigation easier to understand with clear highlighting and icons as well as with providing suggestions for more indicative images related to each department.
We also consulted BPL branding guidelines and created a style guide that ensured consistency across the website.
Boston Public Library design system
Final prototype video
UX specifications/user flow
Evaluation Process
Usability Testing
The usability test starts with a short introduction to the study and Boston Public Library website. We then asked screening questions about their experience with library materials and research for demographic purposes.
The tasks for this section includes users going through the prototype to access the redesigned pages and making judgments about how easy it is to find them and access information. Our interview script is an adapted version of our initial user research script in order to evaluate how effective the changes made to the website were to improve user concerns. Materials for this interview are the Figma prototype and Zoom for any remote interviews.
We attempted to mitigate bias by alternating whether we showed the current BPL website or our prototype screens first for the qualitative assessments. Additionally, we tried to recruit those who had some knowledge of library systems in order to more accurately judge comprehensibility compared to other platforms or services.
Research Analysis and Patterns
After conducting our usability tests and qualitative analysis, we came together to compile our research findings. From our usability tests, we calculated the success rate of the tasks and connected them to our previously mentioned UX requirements. Furthermore, we came together to use affinity diagramming to find consistent themes across our interviewees. Our results gave us a set of small adjustments to be made as well as new features that showed improvement in user experience.
Affinity diagram for usability testing/interview results - round 2
Affinity diagram for qualitative assessment - round 2
Final Adjustments and Recommendations
Final Adjustments to Designs
The adjustments to our final design will be primarily informed by the suggestions and common themes found in our evaluation through the final round of usability testing and qualitative assessments:
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Add headers on the "Plan Your Research Visit" page to make the step by step directions for creating a Reading Room appointment easier to follow and scan as well as make content hierarchy more intuitive
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Make a collection of suggested images for BPL to use for better representing their discovery tools and departments on the "Search & Discover" page
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Edit webpage images to exhibit consistent warmth, saturation, sharpness, and more to improve visual appeal
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Alter the table of contents on each webpage to better reflect page content and structure
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Add functionality for the “apply” button for the tag filter so that filtered results can be exhibited
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Improve the aesthetics of the navigation bar with wider margins, consistent spacing, and more
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Add breadcrumbs on the Special Collections' home page for consistency among the webpages
Final Recommendations
Our final recommendations can be considered more general suggestions with consideration to the constraints of BPL's website template software, Bibliocommons. Recommendations aim to help improve overall usability in a feasible way.
Final recommendations for BPL staff
Final Steps and Client Handoff
Final Report and Presentation
At the culmination of our planning, research, design, and evaluation phases we came together to create a Final Report documenting what we did during our UX capstone project and why we did it. In addition to the final report, we developed UX Specifications in order to clear up which changes we made to original designs and how they enhance they user experience. Lastly, we designed a slide deck further summarizing our project. We then formally presented these slides to classmates, faculty, and clients during the last day of class.
UMSI Exhibition
We were also responsible for putting together an exposition poster for the University of Michigan School of Information's annual showcase. We presented our poster to those who approached our table and had the pleasure of walking around and viewing other undergraduate UMSI student projects. It was a fun, high-energy event and I enjoyed celebrating all the hard work my peers and I put in.
Boston Public Library exposition poster
Exhibition poster printed
Jason, Alex, Dani, Me (left to right)
Client Handoff
We met bi-weekly with our clients (BPL staff) throughout the project to get share our progress and receive feedback. After our exposition presentation, we met up virtually with Special Collections staff members, Kathleen Monahan and Eve Neiger, as well as BPL's web services specialist, Meia Geddes, to hand over all materials and relay final recommendations for the website redesign.
Unfortunately, some changes cannot currently be implemented due to the constraints of BPL's existing website system (Bibliocommons). Nonetheless, our clients have expressed strong gratitude for our findings, recommendations, and redesigns, and intend to refer to them in the future when making updates to BPL's Special Collections webpages. Furthermore, they've already successfully implemented one of our redesign suggestions, involving the reorganization of information on the Special Collections home page. Additionally my team member, Jason, is planning a visit to the library to assist with photography for the 'Search & Discover' page.