User Experience (UX) Design for Libraries (THE TECH SET® #18)

User experience (UX) characterizes how a person feels about using a product, system or service. UX design incorporates the practical aspects of utility, ease of use and efficiency to make your web design and functionality decisions with patrons in mind. This results in a better design, a more intuitive interface, and a more enjoyable experience. This book shows you how to get there by providing hands-on steps and best practices for UX design principles, practices, and tools to engage with patrons online and build the best web presence for your library. You ll find out how to conduct a usability test, perform a card sort, make decisions on how to build the architecture of your site, create personas as a cornerstone of your website planning process, create a content strategy, and perform an experience-based evaluation of your site.

Aaron Schmidt has been a circulation clerk, reference librarian, and library director. He has published articles in Library Journal, School Library Journal, Library High Tech News, ONLINE, and other journals. He has presented on the topic of library technology and usability throughout the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Spain. In 2005, Schmidt was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker. Currently he is a principal at INFLUX Library Users Experience Consulting and maintains Walking Paper, a library and website usability blog.

Amanda Etches is the Head of Discovery & Access at the University of Guelph Library, where she spends her time guiding teams and projects that are all about making the overall library experience better for users, both in-person and online. Prior to her current role, she was the User Experience Librarian at McMaster University Library. She is also part of Influx, a user experience consultancy that works with libraries. Her research interests include human–computer interaction, information architecture, and web/interaction/UX/service design, and she frequently writes and presents on web design, usability, and user experience practices and trends. Amanda blogs at etc.