Strategies to Improve the User Experience

ABSTRACT

Libraries are increasingly embracing user experience (UX) and user-centered design principles to improve the satisfaction and success of library users. Electronic resources management can utilize such principles to better support users as they interact with the library's website and its electronic resources. In this column, four academic librarians discuss strategies libraries can employ to improve the user experience. These strategies include utilizing basic UX principles when designing sites and interfaces; analyzing quantitative data to inform the library on how such sites are being used; recruiting strategies for library user studies; and, finally, a call to move to a more unified user experience and to work more closely with vendors on improvements to help users succeed.

Keywords:

• electronic resources management
• library websites
• usability
• user-centered design
• user experience

Notes

1 I encourage you to read Robert Taylor's masterful article on question-negotiation, still so very relevant nearly 50 years after its publication: “The inquirer is only concerned with getting an answer, not with system niceties. Nor is he interested in learning and maintaining currency with a system in which only a very minor part has relevancy to him” (1968, p.188).