20 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
We do usability testing every year and a large user survey every two years. We also conduct ethnographic studies, but
the last one was in 2006, so won’t be discussed in this survey. The next one will be in spring 2011.
We don’t call it “User Experience” at BYU, but we do the activities defined in the questions above.
We have done several of each, surveys and boards. We have faculty and student boards. We have done focus groups
with students. I personally make visits to department chairs to ask them about their experience with the library – it’s an
open-ended conversation that is sometimes attended by faculty. More important, at our public services retreat in July
2010 our topic was customer service and user experience. This was the launch of a conversation in public services about
the differences between customer service and user experience. This is an ongoing project. For example, on January 14,
2011 we had a 90 minute program where we watched video by user experience consultant Joe Michelli, had lightning
talks by staff on service issues, and started something we call “Capture an Idea” project. Back in the fall of 2010, our
head of reference attended an ethnographic research workshop, and we are now planning our first study which will
focus on faculty and how they create links to library content on their course sites.
We have done surveys, focus groups, a faculty advisory committee, outreach to campus organizations.
We utilize a year round online survey as well as an annual print survey.
2. Does your library have plans to engage in any user experience activities in the coming year? N=71
Yes 69 97%
No 2 3%
If yes, will these activities be one-time/project-based or ongoing or both? N=69
Project-based 7 10%
Ongoing 5 7%
Both 57 83%
Comments
Project-based
We’re in the planning phases for more focus groups and surveys.
Ongoing
My hope is to increase our assessment activities and add an assessment coordinator to keep those activities focused
and effective.
We will have a “Capture an Idea” project in which staff have special notebooks to record things that are broken,
observations of users, comments, complaints we have student workers participating as well. Before we can understand
what the library user experience should be, we need to understand what it is now and how we go about designing
it to be better. This is part of an ongoing effort to create more staff awareness about UX in the library. You can’t just
We do usability testing every year and a large user survey every two years. We also conduct ethnographic studies, but
the last one was in 2006, so won’t be discussed in this survey. The next one will be in spring 2011.
We don’t call it “User Experience” at BYU, but we do the activities defined in the questions above.
We have done several of each, surveys and boards. We have faculty and student boards. We have done focus groups
with students. I personally make visits to department chairs to ask them about their experience with the library – it’s an
open-ended conversation that is sometimes attended by faculty. More important, at our public services retreat in July
2010 our topic was customer service and user experience. This was the launch of a conversation in public services about
the differences between customer service and user experience. This is an ongoing project. For example, on January 14,
2011 we had a 90 minute program where we watched video by user experience consultant Joe Michelli, had lightning
talks by staff on service issues, and started something we call “Capture an Idea” project. Back in the fall of 2010, our
head of reference attended an ethnographic research workshop, and we are now planning our first study which will
focus on faculty and how they create links to library content on their course sites.
We have done surveys, focus groups, a faculty advisory committee, outreach to campus organizations.
We utilize a year round online survey as well as an annual print survey.
2. Does your library have plans to engage in any user experience activities in the coming year? N=71
Yes 69 97%
No 2 3%
If yes, will these activities be one-time/project-based or ongoing or both? N=69
Project-based 7 10%
Ongoing 5 7%
Both 57 83%
Comments
Project-based
We’re in the planning phases for more focus groups and surveys.
Ongoing
My hope is to increase our assessment activities and add an assessment coordinator to keep those activities focused
and effective.
We will have a “Capture an Idea” project in which staff have special notebooks to record things that are broken,
observations of users, comments, complaints we have student workers participating as well. Before we can understand
what the library user experience should be, we need to understand what it is now and how we go about designing
it to be better. This is part of an ongoing effort to create more staff awareness about UX in the library. You can’t just
