2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The library is interested in examining how people interact with physical spaces and services to discover trends, high use points, and needs. To accomplish this, the library has begun the process of developing a multi-phase user experience study. The path to performing a user experience study starts long before doing any work.

First, a review of user experience studies was conducted. This review looks at a wide variety of literature to determine best practices and to establish procedures for the upcoming study. Some best practices gleaned from the review include identifying the library's mission or what is the overarching purpose of the library service. Next, determining objectives that meet the mission statement. Finally, developing indicators that demonstrate if the objectives were being met.

The literature review allowed the researchers to understand the data collection process. Libraries naturally collect data – gate count, circulation statistics, event attendance – that can be used as indicators. However, developing tools to augment these traditional metrics is a challenge. The tools that a library can implement are endless - surveys, interactive displays, floorplan mapping, focus groups, etc. Reviewing previous studies allows the researchers to work on matching up the correct tool with the indicator to justify its inclusion in their forthcoming study.

Overall, the process from deciding to perform a user-experience study to conducting a userexperience study is lengthy. The authors hope that this review could inform what that process looks like and act as a template for implementing future studies.