So, what is User Experience, exactly?
User Experience (UX) is an umbrella term that encompasses all aspects of the customer’s experience with your library and its services. The foundation of user experience is based in the disciplines of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design (IxD).
HCI is the study of what happens when you place people and computers together. As computer use became more commonplace, HCI experts soon discovered that designing the hardware that made data input possible was but one part of the puzzle. Computer users, particularly novice users, would benefit from software-based interfaces that facilitated interaction and improved user success rates.
For example, compare your average UNIX command line interface with the Mac OS X graphical user interface.
While both interfaces might be daunting in their own way, a graphical interface that uses familiar terminology (folders), iconography, (a picture of a trash can), and metaphors (opening a window) presents a familiar mental model to the user, which then increases their confidence while reducing the likelihood that they’ll make errors.
User Experience design, then, is a marriage between HCI and interface design.
But Why User Experience?
The practice and discipline of user experience places the person, as opposed to the product, at the centre of the development process. The process is used to develop products and services that emphasize the needs of the users of the system.
The benefits of UX to the end user may be obvious, but in developing, implementing, and adhering to a UX strategy, libraries stand to gain rich and valuable information that helps us tailor our services so that they meet the user’s needs better. Services and products can become more efficient and easier to use, which can reduce the amount of time library information staff spend on patron training and technical instruction.
UX seeks to answer the following questions:
- Who are our users?
- What do they want to do?
- What is the context of use?
- What is important to our users?
- What do they think about, and how do they make sense of what they are doing?
The UX process ensures that no aspect of a website or service is designed without conscious and explicit intent. Every action, task, interaction, and graphical element in the interface has been designed for the express purpose of helping the user successfully complete her desired task.
Customers benefit because they enjoy using the library website and services that were designed to be desirable, simple to use, and efficient. Library stake-holders (boards of directors, management) benefit because this process reduces risk and increases patron usage (and we all know how important those statistics are). Developers and web teams benefit because the process puts them in direct contact with customers and helps them develop an understanding of who our customers are, their wants and needs, and how they use library services.
As librarians, we have always made connections with patrons and the information resources they need. Reference transactions have always included inquiry, observation, analysis, and deployment, and the creation of reference resources is not a new field for library information staff. Reference services and user experience are complementary disciplines and seem to be a natural wellspring from which to draw a new generation of in-house user experience professionals.
The next entry in this series will begin a discussion on user experience techniques.