We designed a website that helped job seekers utilize their local library to find and prepare for a new career.

Content

Problems Research Solution Outcomes

Overview

Our class assignment was to strengthen the library's role in its local community, with a focus on career assistance. We first set out to verify this problem and found data showing that many libraries struggled to stay relevant, due to a lack of awareness for their services. We interviewed both patrons and librarians to contextualize our research. Our solution addressed key problems introduced in these interviews such as finding career resources, search optimization, and modernization of library websites. This was presented to three different instructors, all of which gave very positive feedback. (Unfortunately, this project ended shortly before COVID-19 started spreading in the US, so we were not able to follow up with the librarians or patrons to see what they thought)

Team: Four UX Design students; we rotated team leaders for each phase of the project. This case study details my personal contributions.

Tools: Sketch for wireframes Invision for clickable prototypes Principle for the final prototype with interactions OptimalSort for card sorting surveys to aid information architecture Mural for remote collaboration and affinity mapping Zoom for remote collaboration and user interviews Trello for project management Zeplin for annotations

Timeline: Roughly two months, with team meetings at least once a week and progress update presentations every other week.

Problem Space - Local libraries replete with career services

The pre-assigned project brief scenario evolved around data that showed how library usage increased across the US over the past 10 years by 20%, and as much as 50% for library programs. Local libraries seemed to be the cornerstone for people who needed help keeping up with an increasingly digital world, from housing resources to skills training to entrepreneurial research and more.

We did a competitive analysis, contextual inquiries, and user interviews with subject matter experts as well as library patrons to establish a better understanding of the problem. These are the key issues we uncovered:

This is a publicly available image of the library I conducted interviews at (after asking the librarian)

• There is a large number of career development software and events already available at libraries that were underutilized and difficult to find.
• The biggest issue for librarians was a lack of awareness for all the services they offered (skills-training events, statewide library network, bill-pay assistance, etc)
• Many patrons used the library to learn new skills, but did not often find what they wanted at their local library.
• Read more about how we defined the problem

User Research Insights - A lack of awareness for resources

We needed to understand more about how library patrons went about using library resources. My group created personas, customer journey maps, and user stories to visualize the disconnect between the library providing resources, and the patrons unable to find those resources.

This is a screenshot of the Plano, Texas government library website my contextual inquiry participant showed me during our interview in December of 2019. It was really difficult for him to find the relevant career resources.

As of July 2020, they have improved the information architecture of the site to make it easier to find each resource (unfortunately this has nothing to do with my group, but it is interesting to see how we identified this issue before they did).

We pulled out some critical pain points:

<aside> ⚠️ Interview participants often got lost trying to navigate local library websites.

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<aside> ⚠️ All the people we interviewed had a hard time with technology, but roughly half would persist despite how frustrated they were, and the other half would seek help.

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