When the UX team moved out of the technology department to be housed centrally in administration, I knew we’d expand our scope to include projects related to physical space. I didn’t know that for two weeks at the end of the fall semester, I’d be immersed in a furniture study to quickly gather feedback from students on dozens of furniture options. It was a new thing for the UX team. It was interesting. And I thought I’d share what we did.

Context

We’re undergoing a massive, multi-million dollar renovation to our Main and Science-Engineering Libraries. Part of the renovation includes new furniture for our ground floors. In early November, 2018, we received dozens of chairs, a few tables, and a couple pieces of lounge furniture to pilot for a few weeks. They were placed throughout the Main Library ground floor, with tags identifying them.

We were given a quick timeline to gather as much feedback as we could from students to guide decisions. The UX team (3 of us) worked with our new assessment librarian, Lara Miller, and staff from access services, John Miller-Wells and Michael Principe.

Methods

Michael and John created a survey with Qualtrics that people could take online or fill out in person. They have student workers dedicated to data collection who collected observational data (primarily counts of furniture usage) and transcribed the print survey results.

Lara and the UX team conducted more qualitative observations, and did some informal interviews with people using the furniture.

We placed stock photos that the companies gave us (just a selection of some of the furniture) on boards in the space and asked people to mark their favorites with sticky notes. Realizing quickly that this did little to tell us why pieces were marked, we asked participants to also describe the furniture in a few words.

Getting close to the end of the pilot, we realized we didn’t have as much feedback as we wanted on particular choices, such as the laptop tables. We also wanted to compare some specific stools and specific chairs side-by-side.

To get this feedback, we posted photos of the pilot furniture on a large whiteboard and then placed the actual furniture nearby. We asked participants to mark their favorites with green sticky dots and their least favorites with red sticky dots. (We since realized this would be an issue for colorblind users, so in future might use something like stars and sad faces instead).

Limitations

We were short on time, it was near the end of the semester, and we had a lot of furniture to get feedback on. The stock photos also didn’t match the pilot furniture exactly.

It’s hard to get authentic feedback on this type of thing. Most of the data we collected was attitudinal rather than behavioral. And if we really want to make the best decisions for our students, we should know what they do not just what they think. The best way to discover how students actually use the furniture and what they prefer might be an ethnographic study, but we didn’t have time or resources for that.

A significant issue with most of our methods is that students could vote on a chair for aesthetic reasons (color, shape) when they haven’t actually used it in any real capacity. So a chair could score highly because it’s attractive but not particularly functional, especially for long periods of study.

The decision making process at the end of the day was also unclear, as it’s a negotiation between the library project team, the architects, and the vendors. We can provide the data we collected, but then it’s essentially out of our hands.

Findings

We ended up with 283 completed surveys, 606 sticky notes on the stock photos, and 573 sticky dots on the whiteboards (we removed the stickies as we went so the boards wouldn’t get overwhelmed). We also had 13 days worth of usage data and a handful of notes from qualitative observations.

While we had a couple of hundred survey results, since each survey only referred to a single piece of furniture it was hard to make any conclusions (just 0-5 pieces of feedback per piece). We found that the comparative data was much more useful, and in retrospect would have done more of this from the get go.

We put together all the data and in December were able to present a selection of furniture we recommended and didn’t recommend for purchase.

In the chairs category, most of the recommendations were adjustable, on wheels, with arms, and with fabric seats. For stools, the ability to adjust up and down for people of different heights was especially important. Those chairs we didn’t recommend tended to have hard plastic seats or metal arms, be non-adjustable, or be less comfortable for longer term use.

The winning laptop tables had larger surfaces (to fit a laptop and a mouse/notebook), felt sturdier, and the legs could fit under a variety of chairs or tables.

Overall, we didn’t find anything groundbreaking in the data. But we do now have some solid recommendations to share with the powers that be. And we did learn a lot just through the process, which was in many ways an experiment for us:

• how to gather data on people’s attitudes around furniture
• how to act quickly and iterate on our process
• it’s possible to gather a bunch of data in a short, focused amount of time
• a mixed methods approach works best for this type of thing (as it does for most things!)

The project

At the University of Arizona Libraries, we’re replacing Millennium and Summon with Alma and Primo later this month as our library services platform and primary discovery tool. Needless to say, it’s a critical piece of the library’s experience. It’s the main way people find library materials (both digital and print), access full text, request holds, and manage their accounts. So checking and improving its usability is key.

The team

The focus of our (small but mighty) UX team the past couple months has been Primo. It’s critical, so we were all in.

We hired a grad student intern from the School of Information, Louis Migliazza, who focused his summer internship on Primo usability. That was awesome. Student worker Alex Franz and content and usability specialist Cameron Wiles took turns pairing with Louis for the testing.

We also met weekly for an hour with Erik Radio, our metadata librarian and product owner for Primo. He helped us come up with solutions and worked on the backend to make improvements, contacting Ex Libris when needed.

And we met weekly with the broader Primo implementation and discovery teams, which included stakeholders from throughout the library and were led by our fearless project manager, Joey Longo. At these meetings, we regularly shared our findings and gathered feedback on our plans to address them.

The methods

Louis and Erik’s leadership over the past 6 weeks made it possible for us to conduct a ton of usability testing and make significant customizations to the interface. Building on preliminary research and testing we’d started earlier in the spring, we ultimately tested 22 tasks with 91 participants.

We used Tiny Café (our pop-up food/drink station in our Main Library lobby) to recruit passersby for testing, who were by and large undergraduate and graduate students. We had a handful of library staff stopping by, too. We did this on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for two hour blocks (4 hours a week total). Ultimately, we held 27 hours of Tiny Café, intercepting 84 passersby.

We’d usually test 2 or 3 tasks per participant. And the tasks changed nearly every week as we learned what we needed to learn, made adjustments to the interface, tested again, and/or moved on to the next tasks we needed to test.

We also recruited faculty with help from our liaison librarians. The majority of those sessions were lengthier, moderated, remote tests using Zoom.

All told, participants included 36 undergrads, 31 grad students, 7 faculty, 7 library staff, and 10 community users.

Findings

Searching and filtering

Participants were 100% successful at:

• Finding a specific item by title
• Searching for journals by topic or title
• Renewing an item

One grad student said, “Looks pretty intuitive, pretty easy to navigate.” And one undergraduate said, “I think it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.”

They were mostly successful at using filters, specifically:

• Using facets to narrow results (84% success)
• Finding an item at a specific library (83% success)

Some of those who weren’t successful would only use the search box to narrow their results, avoiding filters entirely. Or they would skim through their results to try and find an item like what we were describing. (In our scenarios, we intentionally didn’t ask them to “use the filters” to avoid leading them in that direction. Rather, we asked them to “narrow your results to only books from the last ten years” and “find a book that’s in the Health Sciences Library.”) That said, we did make a number of changes to our filters along the way (described later on), hopefully making them a bit more useful.

Signing in

We observed some issues with signing in, too. Only 83% of people successfully signed in to see the due dates of checked out items. To address this, we changed the language in the top-right utility navigation from “Guest” to “Sign in/account.” We also removed the word “English” along with the language options, which caused confusion (and disappointment, since Spanish wasn’t an option and we’re a Hispanic-serving institution).

Saving items

Interestingly, only 2 of 8 students successfully saved an item to their account. But then 4 faculty and PhD students were successful on first attempt. This might tell us that undergrads don’t tend to think of or use this feature. It doesn’t fit with their mental model when it comes to saving articles.

When asked, they said they would use other methods outside the tool, such as bookmarking the URL or emailing themselves. We didn’t make any changes to the interface based on this, but found it interesting.

Requesting items

The most challenging task was requesting a hold. Only 40% of participants were successful. This is because you have to be signed into Primo in order to see the “Request” link. If you’re not signed in, the option doesn’t appear. We ran a subsequent test where we were already signed in, and 100% of participants were successful.

By default, Primo has a yellow bar that says “Sign-in for more options,” but people didn’t notice this most of the time. Especially since it’s in the “View it” section of the records, and people tend to be looking near the “Find it” section.

We found it problematic that the interlibrary loan option appears when not signed in, but the hold option does not. In contrast to requesting a hold, 90% of participants were successful in requesting an interlibrary loan, using the link: “Borrow this item from another library.” By requiring users sign in, the interface essentially hides functionality from the user, causing a significant usability issue.

Ideally, we think, the “Request” link should always appear and upon click, the user is prompted to sign in. (This is how our current catalog works). But with this not being possible, the only thing we could really do is customize the message. So we changed it to say: “Want to place a hold? Sign in.”

User impressions of usability

A few weeks into our testing, we decided to add on a System Usability Scale survey after each session to gather overall impressions in a more systematic way. Of the 32 people who filled it out:

• 89% thought various functions were well integrated
• 84% would use Primo frequently
• 83% thought most people would learn to use Primo very quickly
• 78% think Primo is easy to use
• 70% were very confident using Primo

Needless to say, we were pretty happy with these numbers.

Other customizations

Changing terminology

We found that some of the default terminology wasn’t ideal. For example, one grad student said, “Loans? I think about money…I just don’t like the word ‘loans.’”

Here are a few terms we updated:

• Item in place > In library
• Full text not available > Available to request
• Fetch item > Find a specific item
• Expand my results > Include results beyond UA Libraries
• Loans > Checked-out items

Updating the homepage search box

To mimic existing Summon and Catalog options while focusing on the most common search behavior, we:

• Created drop-down options for title, author, and call number
• Put an Advanced search link in the bottom right
• Added buttons to take users to the most common alternate starting points: See all databases and Find a journal

Removing less helpful or redundant elements

To make things as intuitive as possible, we:

• Removed the vendor product name
• Removed the sign-in banner for users on campus
• Removed redundant title attributes from the tile menu
• Removed Personalize option (redundant with subject filters)
• Reduced and re-ordered the Send to options

Making search results and filters more intuitive

To reduce cognitive load, we:

• Moved filters from the right to the left
• Re-ordered filters so that the most-used options are at the top
• Changed “Availability” to “Show only” as a filter category
• Customized the icons to be more consistent and recognizable
• Removed filters that were confusing, less useful (e.g. “Call number range”), or redundant (e.g. “Location” in favor of “Library”)
• Reduced number of items displaying by default underneath each filter category

Putting content at point of need

To help users along, we:

• Added a Locate button to print records that takes people to the call number guide
• Put searching tips below the Advanced search option as well as the Library search landing page
• Added suggested librarians for when people search particular disciplines
• Added a link to WorldCat above the search box

Next steps

This is a huge change for our users, but we’re feeling pretty good about where we’re at. We did a lot of testing and a lot of tweaking, and participants were overall successful at completing the primary tasks we’d identified.

We go live on July 20(ish), and are sure to discover more UX concerns once we have people using the system in their daily lives.

We’ll continue to gather feedback and make adjustments as needed.

Perhaps one undergraduate said it best: “I think I liked the old interface better because I’m comfortable with it…I’m sure once I get used to [Primo], it will be ok.”

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

And in other news…. I published a book! It came out at the end of September and I’m hoping it will be useful for anyone who is interested in dabbling in usability testing for the first time or leveling up their skills. Whether you’re on a string budget with little staffing, or you have a larger web team that’s committed to improving the user experience, this should be a worthwhile read.

Check it out. I’d love to hear your feedback. Now available on Amazon.