Bruce Nussbaum is ready to get off the design thinking ship, but one of its original captains is still strong at the helm. I’m talking about David Kelley, described in this recent interview with Fast Company as the principal guru of design thinking. In this interview Kelley doesn’t comment on Nussbaum’s decision to move on to something new that he calls “creative intelligence”, but focuses on how design thinking applies to leadership. To motivate employees and enable them to achieve workplace success, a good leader can improve by applying some basic design thinking processes.
Here are a few of Kelley’s insights into “leadership by design”:
* The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing–building empathy for the people that you’re entrusted to help. Once you understand what they really value, it’s easy because you can mostly give it to them.
* The way I would measure leadership is this: of the people that are working with me, how many wake up in the morning thinking that the company is theirs?
* I’m trying to get people to remain confident in their creative ability. In order for them to have that kind of creativity, you have to be very transparent. Understand them and involve them in the decisions being made. Even if the decision goes the wrong way, they still were there and saw how we decided to do this and so they’re behind it.
* I don’t think people do anything out of fear very well. So I think the only choice is to have them intrinsically motivated.
This is a worthwhile read because I previously haven’t thought much about the IDEO approach to design thinking as a touchstone for better leadership. But I like the ideas that Kelley shares. What is more important than having empathy for those we work with everyday? How, as a leader, can I achiever greater transparency? How can I encourage creativity and innovation within the organization? As always, Kelley gives us something to think about beyond the traditional perceptions of design.
Nearly everyone was surprised to read Bruce Nussbaum’s latest essay about design thinking titled “Design Thinking is a Failed Experiment: So What’s Next”. I first shared a link to Nussbaum with DBL readers back in 2007, and recommended his blog as a good source of information about design thinking and user experience. Since then Nussbaum has been a leading proponent of design thinking as a way to improve organizations and increase creativity and innovation. In his regular columns about design thinking for BusinessWeek Nussbaum would share great insights into how organizations were using design thinking to achieve better results. How is it that someone so connected with design thinking would write “The decade of Design Thinking is ending and I, for one, am moving on.”
The gist of Nussbaum’s farewell to design thinking is that the business community has failed to apply design thinking as it was intended – or as it is applied in the design community. The failure is not so much about what design thinking is as the way that business has turned it into a process for achieving creativity. He writes:
Design Thinking originally offered the world of big business–which is defined by a culture of process efficiency–a whole new process that promised to deliver creativity. By packaging creativity within a process format, designers were able to expand their engagement, impact, and sales inside the corporate world. Companies were comfortable and welcoming to Design Thinking because it was packaged as a process…There were many successes, but far too many more failures in this endeavor. Why? Companies absorbed the process of Design Thinking all to well, turning it into a linear, gated, by-the-book methodology that delivered, at best, incremental change and innovation.
It seems to me that Nussbaum is saying that business has warped the intent of design thinking by trying to turn it into a totally rational, analytical process for achieving creativity – in other words – trying to turn it into every other business fad such as TQM or Sigma Six. If you apply the process and follow the process it will provide the desired results. Only, according to Nussbaum, it didn’t. Nussbaum appears to have lost his optimism about design thinking’s capacity to serve as a process to help business become more creative and ultimately better organizations with improved products and services. In his post, Nussbaum still has some great things to say about design thinking’s impact has on improving some areas of society, but it ultimately hasn’t delivered on creativity. That’s where Nussbaum is headed. He writes:
In my experience, when you say the word “design” to people across a table, they tend to smile politely and think “fashion.” Say “design thinking,” and they stop smiling and tend to lean away from you. But say “creativity” and people light up and lean in toward you… I believe the concept of Creative Intelligence expands that social engagement even further… I am defining Creative Intelligence as the ability to frame problems in new ways and to make original solutions.
Hmm. Does Creative Intelligence sound somewhat like design thinking? Isn’t the goal of design thinkers to creatively identify problems and develop thoughtful solutions – the way that designers do? There are over 80 comments to Nussbaum’s post and many of them take up this point. At least one blogger agreed with Nussbaum, and provided a good discussion on the connection between creativity and innovation (saying that business saw design thinking as the path to innovation).
That Nussbaum says he is moving on to something new should be of little concern to those of us who find value in design thinking. His concerns seem more focused on the way business used design thinking – and the fact that there were more failures than successes – than the process of design thinking itself. But there’s a useful lesson here (and in the video interview with Tim Brown he provides in his post – see the 16-25 minute area) that if you just look at design thinking as a rote series of steps that you can apply to any problem, it’s bound to fail. The focus needs to be on the generation of creativity in developing solutions – on the outcomes. I will be interested in Nussbaum’s book on Creative Intelligence that comes out next year. I wonder what he will say about design thinking, and what more Creative Intelligence can offer us.
It’s one thing to say that design thinking, at its core, is about thinking the way designers think – but what does that really mean and how can you best articulate exactly what is unique about the way designers approach problems that leads to innovation. In this HBR Conversations Blog post titled “How Good Designers Think” Simon Rucker does a nice job of sharing his ideas on what makes the design thinking process unique. He does make a reference to a 2007 blog post by Bruce Nussbaum on the intangible assets of design thinkers. Rucker breaks down the work of designers into three areas: insight; inspiration; action.
Here are a couple of highlights from Rucker:
* “Good designers aim to move beyond what you get from simply asking consumers what they need and want” – Designers want to find out what consumers won’t tell them or directly ask for – that’s where great innovations come from – giving people something they want or think they need without them even asking for it. Don’t think of people as consumers – but as people who need/want things. So instead observe.
* “Good designers want to solve problems — and this makes them want to transform insights into inspiration.” – As has been said many times before here designers are about figuring out what the problem is and how to fix it. Good designers are inspired to imagine the future.
* “When good designers talk about innovation, they mean (and I make no apologies for cribbing Lord Sainsbury’s much-quoted definition), “the successful exploitation of new ideas.” They don’t stop with the invention. They turn their inspirations into reality.” This is perhaps the most important point for librarians. We may come up with many ideas, some of them actually even good, but we too often fail to move our ideas to the implementation stage. Rucker offers some thoughts on what enables designers to get to implementation from idea.
So if you prefer to keep things simple as you work to understand how designers think and as you integrate these principles into your practice, you might just find Rucker’s three-part formula effective:
In the past I’ve contemplated on the outcomes of a total user experience for libraries – and have identified what that experience of totality would be like: memorable; unique; create loyalty, etc
But when I talk with others about the library UX the conversation often turns to questions about what are the qualities of a good user experience – or any great experience for that matter. That is, what more specific things should we be trying to offer? What exactly should we deliver to the community member so his or her reaction would be “I’m having a great experience at this library?” An answer to this question requires us to have a better understanding of the characteristics or qualities of a desired user experience.
To provide that answer I refer back to “Discovering WOW –A Study of Great Retail Shopping Experiences in North American” which I discussed in this post. In that post I mentioned the following qualities:
They are:
* Engagement – being polite, caring and genuinely helpful.
* Executional Excellence – having product knowledge and the ability to patiently explain and advise while providing unexpected quality.
* Brand Experience – good interior design and making customers feel they’re special and get a bargian.
* Expediting – being sensitive to customers’ time in lines and being proactive to streamline the process.
* Problem Recovery – helping to resolve and compensate for problems while ensuring complete satisfaction.
In a recent research project, reported on at the ACRL 2011 Conference, titled “Delivering a WOW User Experience: Do Academic Libraries Measure Up?” Brian Mathews and I asked students about their library user experience and had them compare it to a recent retail experience. Would the student compare their library experience favorably to their retail experiences? You can read the paper for the answers. But we identified nine variables that we think are relevant to defining the qualities of a library user experience:
* Product Availability (book)
* Ease of Finding Product
* Greeting/Acknowledgement
* Were the Right Questions Asked
* Were the Staff Interested in You
* Evidence of Executional Excellence
* Sensitive to Your Time
* Patient and Caring
* Problem Resolution
If librarians can master these qualities and integrate them into the delivery of service wherever a community member connects with a library touchpoint that could be the best way to consistently achieve a great library experience. I recently learned about another way of defining the elements of a great user experience. I found them in this piece on “The Total Experience: Customers Deserve Better”. According to this essay there are three fundamental qualities to the total experience:
* Functional: How well did the experiences meet their needs?
* Accessible: How easy was it for them to do what they wanted to do?
* Emotional: How did they feel about the experiences?
This is according to Bruce Tempkin, the author of the article and individual behind the Tempkin Experience Ratings. The goal of the ratings is to identify those companies delivering a good or great user experience – and very few actually succeed. Tempkin writes:
There are a lot of reasons why some companies outperform others. But one of the underappreciated areas is customer experience (CX). Sure, companies often say they are customer-centric, but only a handful put the time and energy into becoming customer-centric. That’s why it was not a huge surprise to find that only 16% of companies received “good” or “excellent” ratings in the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings.
What could companies and organizations do to improve? Most do pretty well on the functional area; the experience meets the consumer’s basic needs. You needed a hotel room for the night – and you got one; that’s meeting a functional need. Improvement is needed in the other two dimensions. We’ve got to make it easier for community members to do what they want to do, and we’ve got to do better at creating an emotional connection. Put that into the context of your library. The content, whether it’s a book or journal articles or film, is being delivered. Was it easy for the community to access these materials? Do we know enough about how they felt about getting the content, and was there any interaction with the library staff? Did we have a chance to create an emotional connection, and leave that person feeling great about the library and staff?
Tempkin offers four tips for delivering the total experience that get closer to achieving the qualities of the good/excellent experience. They are:
1. Purposeful Leadership – If the executive team doesn’t behave like it’s important, then why should the rest of the organization?
2. Employee Engagement – If employees are not aligned with the goals of the company then there’s no way they will be able to deliver great experiences for customers. So any CX effort that does not engage employees will likely fail.
3. Compelling Brand Values – Brands are more than marketing slogans and advertising campaigns; they represent the organization’s raison d’être. So companies need to understand their brand promises.
4. Customer Connectedness – Every time a customer interacts with the organization, it leaves an imprint on them, pushing them either towards higher loyalty or further on the path to abandonment. That’s why we need to develop systematic approaches like “voice of the customer” programs for collecting and responding to customer feedback.
Consider taking a closer look at the Tempkin Experience Ratings. Between the information from the Retail Shopping Experience study and these ratings, a stronger sense of what it means to deliver a library user experience emerges. It should enable us to begin a conversation in our libraries on how we go about designing the right user experience. This new information helps to put the pieces into place.
While I cannot quite recall where I came across it, most likely in one of the two dozen or so design-oriented blogs that I follow, I recently discovered the book Managing as Designing. First published in 2004, it was edited by Richard Boland and Fred Collopy, two faculty members at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. The book itself is the product of a Managing as Design Seminar that took place at the then recently completed Peter B. Lewis Building, home of the Weatherhead School. What triggered the seminar, book, and even a DVD about the seminar, was Boland’s experience working with Frank O. Gehry on the design and construction of the Lewis Building. In the first chapter, Boland and Collopy write:
During the four and one-half years of working with Gehry Partners on the planning, design and construction of the Lewis Building, we experienced an approach to problem solving that is quite different from our own, from that of the managers we study, and from what we teach our students. We refer to this mind-set and approach to problem solving as a “design attitude”…What is needed in managment practice and education today is the development of a “design attitude” which goes beyond default solutions in creating new possibilities for the future.
As you read this chapter you can feel how impressed Boland and Collopy were with what they were learning about the design attitude from Gehry and his associates. It had such a profound impact on them that they became determined to radically change the nature of business education at Weatherhead. The term “design thinking” is used here and there in the book, but Boland and Collopy seem to prefer their own design attitude. Perhaps if they were writing this book today they would use the term design thinking. As I read different chapters I kept asking myself how I could have missed this book for so long? When I first became interested in design thinking in 2006 there was far less material being generated about it, and having this book would have been a big help in shaping my thinking. It was actually in the collection at the library I was working at back then; I just missed it.
In the first chapter, Boland and Collopy expand on the differences between their traditional “decision attitude” and the design attitude they were learning from Gehry. The decision attitude, which was the long-held focus of management education, towards problem solving was “overwhelmingly dominant in management practice…and solves problems by making rational choices among alternatives and uses tools such as economic analysis, risk assessment, multiple criteria decision making, simulation, and the time value of money.” The design attitude by contrast “is concerned with finding the best answer possible given the skills, time, and resources of the team, and takes for granted that it will require the invention of new alternatives. The decision attitude assumes there is already an optimal solution to the problem, and that managers just need to be rational and analytical in order to identify that solution. The design attitude allows for the possibility that the solution doesn’t already exist, and that a team will need to create a new, untried possibility. One can’t help but make a connection between these ideas and Martin’s “opposable mind” and “knowledge funnel” models of how design influences decision making so that it is a blending of the rational and intuitive mind in which the goal is to neither choose solution A or B but rather innovate solution C.
You don’t need to read every essay in this book. Some are highly theoretical, others may be more design specific than desired. One chapter to explore is the one titled “The Role of Constraints” by Vandenbosch and Gallagher. They discuss how dealing with constraints impacts the work of artists and architects, and that it is important to acknowledge that constraints are fundamental to the design process. Designers must constantly deal with constraints, and appreciating them can lead to improved creativity. There’s hardly a project in the academic library that is free of constraints, be it time or money. I think this is an area where we can learn a great deal from design in learning how to turn our constraints in thinking opportunities – and I hope to write more about this.
If you don’t have time to read Managing as Design you can get the gist of the ideas and applications by watching this interview with Richard Boland or you can now view the original DVD made to accompany the workshop. It is found in seven parts on YouTube. Start with this video. By the way, discovering these videos has also been a great part of this find. I hope you will enjoy learning from them.
One of my job responsibilities at the Temple University Libraries is to serve as the official complaint department. That’s right. The complaints and suggestions are funneled to me. I investigate each one personally or will assign a staff member to look into it. We explore what went wrong and then work to resolve the problem or at least acknowledge it and explain the issues – and when appropriate acknowledge where we failed and what we will do to improve.
Of course, at one time or another most every library worker who connects with members of the user community will hear complaints. It may just be about the lack of paper towel in the bathroom, an improperly imposed fine or the lack of open computers. Many of these complaints are resolved on the spot, or staff will do their best to avoid having a minor problem become a major issue. I always encourage my front line colleagues to refer any one with a complaint to me. I enjoy the challenge of turning a community member from someone who is angry at us into someone who becomes an advocate for us.
By advocate I mean a person who will actually promote the library in the community. We can do all the marketing and promotion we desire, but there’s nothing quite like building a base of loyal advocates who will be energized enough to tell their friends, colleagues and others how great the library is and what it has to offer that can’t be had elsewhere. How about when the library experience we deliver is mostly negative? What do we create when we fail to deal effectively with complaints? Badvocates – that’s the opposite of an advocate. A badvocate may be a chronic complainer who has nothing good to say about the library, but more likely the badvocate is a community member who just had a bad library experience that’s going unresolved. The problem is that the badvocate goes out of their way to spread negativity about the library to the rest of the community or beyond. We all know that members of the user community are much more likely to complain than praise, so it demands extra effort to avoid bad experiences – and we must respond quickly because the word can be spread rapidly via social media.
I first encountered the term “badvocate” in this Mashable post titled “Deal with Negative Online Sentiment About Your Brand” and it immediately resonated with me. The author, Maria Ogneva is the Head of Community at Yammer, where she is in charge of social media and community programs. She spends a fair amount of time dealing with badvocates and trying to prevent them from rising up. She provides three main causes of badvocacy, and you know they happen in your library:
* Inconsistency across channels and touchpoints – this happens when library users have a great experience with one part of the operation but a far worse one at another service point. For example, receiving great service at the desk, but then getting lost in the stacks and finding no one who can help. Or a staff member confirms by phone that a book is available but when the patron arrives the book is impossible to locate.
* Inconsistency with expectations – you know the feeling; you get information off the library website or from a staff member, and then the reality falls far below what was expected. That leaves community members feeling bitter and hostile.
* A negative relationship with library staff – all it takes is one low-morale, uncaring or angry staff member to create that negative relationship. I recently stayed at a hotel and every single employee went out of their way to build the positive experience. It was refreshing to receive such attention, but I was quite sure it was the result of extensive staff development and designing a consistently great experience that helps to avoid negative relationships.
What Are Your Badvocates Saying About the Library? (source: Extractable.com)
You probably know who some of your chronic complainers are, and you also monitor various social networks to see what’s being said about your library. What can you do when someone is trashing your library and its brand? Sometimes the immediate reaction in the library is to dump the complainer into a bin we call “difficult patron”, “problem patron” or what a co-worker once call her “MOP File” for “most obnoxious patron”. This always bothered me because even though there are some individuals who you can’t please no matter what you do, the odds are that whatever is causing the complaint is something that’s broken in our operation.
That is why the first response or action, according to Ogneva, is to “understand who your badvocates are, what they are saying and where they are saying it. The process is about listening, much like finding anything using social media”. That’s the first step in the IDEO design thinking process. Before you attempt to solve any problem, first identify what the problem is – and that often happens when you listen to the person complaining about your library. Beyond properly understanding your badvocates and the root causes for their issues, here are some other strategies recommended by Ogneva:
Reach out – Reach out and acknowledge their pain. Most problems get resolved quickly because the person just wanted someone to talk to. Respect privacy – Know when to take the conversation private. After the initial public tweet, you should reach out in a private channel to really dig in and see if you can make a difference. Offer an individualized solution – In customer service, there’s no “one size fits all,” because each case is different. Offer an individualized solution, which may require you to work with the right people within your own organization. Don’t let it stew – Address sources of conflict quickly. Because most people just want to be heard, cared for and helped, the faster you can reach out, the more likely you will prevent the situation from festering. Never make it personal -If and when conflict escalates, never make it personal. Never attack the person, even if he or she attacks you personally. Keep the conversation focused on the issues. Take action, close the loop – Communicate back to the customer what has been done, or how soon to expect something to be done. Never lose your cool – Just like you shouldn’t make things personal, you should never lose your cool. Choose your words wisely. Watch advocates come to your rescue – If you have done your job cultivating advocacy, in an online conflict, your advocates will come to your rescue. Treat them equally – Make sure you don’t just help badvocates with high influence scores. Every distressed customer is a potential badvocate.
But why get to the point where you need to utilize these strategies to turn your badvocates into your advocates. The best defense against badovacy is a great library user experience. As Ogneva says, “Just as badvocacy is caused by bad user experience, advocacy is caused by excellent experience.” She goes on to say that “Advocates are created when there is a two-way dialogue around their need, and users have a direct input into the future of the product.” Her final piece of advice for creating advocates is to “humanize the brand.”
This makes excellent sense and reinforces what I’ve said previously about making the library about the people who work there and their relationships with the community. If the public only sees the library as a building with books and a website with links to databases, what’s the harm in telling your network how much you hate it and how badly it sucks; it’s not like anyone is being hurt. If members of the user community have experienced the library as engagement with humans they are less likely to be critical and are more likely to see the library as a place where they can take up their problems with people like themselves.
If you have a story to share about turning one of your badvocates in to an advocate – or other ideas for dealing with badvocates – please share it with a comment.
If you were thinking this post was about an interview I conducted with Roger Martin, well, sorry to have misled – though I’d certainly like that opportunity. But the folks at IdeaConnection.com did interview Martin. They produce the weekly Innovation Newsletter which features in depth reviews with many great thought leaders who share their insights into innovation, creativity, teamwork and much more. I subscribe to their weekly e-mail alert which helps me stay on top of the latest interviews. I was pleased to discover a new interview with Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman Business School at the University of Toronto. “Diving Into Mysteries” is an interview well worth reading even if you have previously read Martin’s books such as The Opposable Mind and the Design of Business.
The bulk of the interview focuses on the themes explored in The Design of Business. It all starts with the mystery. Martin states that “Innovation is taking out of a mystery some form of understanding that enables you to focus on some things rather than others…You extract out of a broad, mysterious cloud the things that help you make sense of what you are seeing. That’s a heuristic. Heuristics are ways of thinking about a mystery that helps us to better understand it…The best innovators recognize mysteries, and are brave enough to dive into them.” If you’ve read the Design of Business this interview will refresh you on the core concepts, and if you’ve not yet had an opportunity to do so it will introduce you to Martin’s perspective on design thinking and introduce you to the knowledge funnel.
Speaking of perspectives on design thinking, I recently attended – for the first time – a webcast sponsored by the Stanford School of Design. I was pleased to become aware of these free learning opportunities (even with the promos for the School’s online workshops – but it is still a great way to hear some excellent speakers). The program I attended was titled “Design Thinking and Peak Performance” (sponsored by the Innovation Masters Series: Design Thinking & the Art of Innovation). I’ve provided the link so you can take a look at the webcast. If you have been following the literature on design thinking most of this will sound familiar to you, but I picked up a few new ideas and thoughts about design thinking.
Given my recent reading of the Martin interview I asked the speakers what their perspective was on what I refer to as the “IDEO School of Thought” on design thinking versus the “Roger Martin School of Thought” on design thinking. While the presenters agreed they could see how one could point to these two different schools of thought, they thought that they actually both emerged from earlier perspectives on design thinking that came out of the Stanford engineering and design program. As the speakers said “There is no difference in the underlying philosophy of design thinking” you have coming out of IDEO or the Rotman School of Business. If there was any difference to which they could point it would be that Martin’s vision of design thinking is oriented more to the world of business. They said it “Reframes our design thinking ideas into business concepts for the folks in the boardroom.” I thought that was a pretty good way to describe the difference. I thought the speakers also provided an excellent description of how to introduce design thinking to your colleagues and implement it for a project for the first time (listen the the Q&A period at the last five minutes of the webcast).
Finally, I came across a new book on design thinking (not out quite yet) titled “Design Thinking: Understand – Improve – Apply.” Since it is possible to “look inside” at Amazon I reviewed the table of contents. It looks like a book I’ll want to at least explore. The surprise I discovered is that the book costs $137 at Amazon. I have to think about this one. If you buy a copy, let me know.
Two things happened this past week that stood out for me as signposts that more librarians are becoming familiar with the user experience concept. It is mixed news. It is good that more librarians in all spheres of the profession are gaining awareness about library user experience. What is not so good are the signs of skepticism and misunderstanding about library user experience. Even with the ups and downs, it is encouraging that a broader group of colleagues is engaging in the conversation about user experience.
The first was a discussion over at Friendfeed. A librarian I follow (Nicole Engard) had re-tweeted something a conference speaker (Aaron Schmidt) said during a talk about UX which was quoted as: The future of libraries isn’t a book mausoleum; it’s providing EXPERIENCES. This ignited an interesting conversation because at first there was some offense taken to the “book mausoleum” reference – given that books still are and will continue to be an important part of the experience for many community members. But then it morphed into a conversation about user experience, and that’s where the skepticism appeared in the following types of statements:
“I don’t want my library to give me an experience”; “the experience thing is overblown”; “I am firmly against the experiences movement”; “what I have seen around “experience” in libraries has to with what seems like a relentlessly retail-centric model of what kinds of experiences we should imitate and foster”.
That’s just a sampling. Do keep in mind that these quotes are out of context, and that those who wrote them raised good questions and made good points. I am fine with the skepticism and lack of enthusiasm for user experience when I come across it. That’s because it challenges me to work harder to find better examples and to write more effectively in sharing what I know and believe about the value of designing better library user experiences. While I believe in it, I don’t think everyone else has to, and if there are colleagues who have no interest I’m not about to try to convert them to the accept the gospel. But I would like them to at least better understand what library user experience is really about, and not simply write it off as a business fad, an effort to mimic Starbucks or Zappos or even worse a ploy to psychologically manipulate community members. Here’s what I added to the conversation:
It’s true that no one goes to the library for an experience. But once you get there and use it, you’re going to have an experience. The experience starts as soon as you walk in the door. What are you smelling, seeing and hearing? Is the carpet dirty? Did anyone say hello to you? Make eye contact? Acknowledge that you exist? Was the reference librarian attentive – take an interest in your question? Very helpful you say. What happens when you get lost in the stacks or the person checking out your book is having a bad day? Maybe looking up the book on the OPAC frustrated you. Every single thing that happens is part of your library experience. Good experiences are not random – or if you don’t pay attention to the experience and just let it be random – then bad things can and will happen to degrade the experience. UX isn’t about trying to copy what malls do or Disney or Las Vegas. It’s about being thoughtful to put into place, as Cecily said, the design elements that will help to facilitate good experiences. No one can create an experience for someone else because everyone experiences things in a unique and personal way. But you and your library colleagues can think about the totality of the experience you facilitate so that library community members have a good experience at every touchpoint.
I have no idea if that changed anyone’s mind, but I suggested that folks take some time to visit here and check out the posts that DBL offers on UX. I hope it might get some doubters at least considering the possibility that there could be some value in designing better library experiences. The other positive outcome I took away from the conversation is that a few folks did ask for suggestions for books or other readings that could allow them to learn more about user experience. It’s great to encounter open mindedness about UX. My own suggestion was Subject to Change.
The second sign was a new ARL SPEC Kit survey on – guess what – user experience. Unless you are working at a library that is a member of the Association of Research Libraries this might not mean much to you, but this is the first time a SPEC Kit, which is essentially a survey of activity at all the ARL Libraries, has covered the topic of user experience. So it was great to see this international organization of academic libraries recognizing that we need to know more about how we are studying the user experience in our libraries. Because the survey was just issued, and it will be quite a few months until the final report is issued, I’m not about to pass judgment on this SPEC Kit. I will say that I was mildly disappointed in that, for me at least, it didn’t go quite far enough in asking questions about developing user experiences in the way I tend to think about it. Many of the questions were focused more on assessing specific parts of the library user experience, such as the reference service, the website, etc. So to a certain extent it felt more like the survey was asking what assessment was taking place and what methods were used to conduct the assessment (surveys, focus groups, ethnographic studies, etc.). I would have liked to seen a few questions about projects targeted at developing a library-wide user experience or efforts to get staff thinking more about the user experience, but perhaps that might have created more confusion. Maybe next time.
Despite this, the appearance of the SPEC Kit is another signpost that there is a growing recognition of the user experience concept and its practice, and that’s a good thing. I will be looking forward to the publication of the report. If you’re seeing other signposts of the growing awareness or recognition of the library user experience, share it here.
You can have the greatest idea ever, but if you fail to capture it then there is no chance it could ever come to fruition. So one of the most important steps in moving from idea to implementation is to have a good system for capturing ideas. This topic has come up before at DBL.
At my library we recently had a follow-up to our summer retreat. It was both an opportunity to keep the conversation going about customer service and user experience in the library, and take on a new project to help ourselves get better at improving our user experience. This particular segment of the retreat follow-up program was titled “Capture An Idea.” It introduced an initiative in which all staff would focus on recording ideas about the library and our services. To help get us started, four categories of ideas were recommended:
* Community member’s user behavior
* Things that are broken
* Complaints and compliments
* Whatever – ideas that pop into your head about the library
The Capture an Idea project was introduced and everyone received a well-designed notebook for capturing their ideas:
This is the notebook for ideas distributed to staff
The notebook was designed and produced by Aaron Schmidt, best known for Walking Paper blog. Schmidt also provides a number of nifty library-oriented creativity supplies through his online shop. To capture ideas you need a good notebook, and I thought the inspirational message on the cover would be a good reminder of why we want to capture them. I think my colleagues enjoyed receiving the book. In fact, it didn’t even take 30 minutes for the first good idea to emerge: get more books for our student workers because they are often the eyes and ears of the library when we are not present. See, we can make a difference. I will look forward to all of the ideas we collect during the spring semester.
Back in August 2010 I had the pleasure of participating in the Reference Renaissance Conference. I participated in the closing plenary as part of a panel presentation and discussion about the reference service user experience. The gist of my presentation was that delivering reference service in a library could be more than just a series of transactions, many mundane and some quite challenging – but transactions just the same. If you have read my posts here at DBL in the past, you would have a pretty good idea of what I’d had to say about this topic in my presentation. But just in case you’d like to have more detail, you can read the article I wrote “Fish Market 101: Why Not a Reference User Experience” based on my presentation. It was published in a November 15, 2010 issue of Library Journal.
I hadn’t thought much about that piece until recently when I received a question from Lisa Reuvers. Lisa is a Library Technician at the Buckham Memorial Library in Faribault, MN. Here is what Lisa asked me:
I am from a library in Minnesota, and have just read your article on the “Reference User Experience”. You speak of having a memorable reference experience and I am curious what your ideas might be? How can we make such a formal process more inviting and fun? It is intriguing to me to make the experience memorable, other than just giving them some information and then call, “Next!”.
I think Lisa poses an excellent question, and it’s the exact type of thinking I like to see. I know that some of what I have to say about user experience doesn’t always translate to the front line of the library, and library workers should challenge me to come up with better ideas and examples. I suspected that Lisa was asking me for specific actions she and her colleagues could take to transition a reference encounter from a transaction to an experience. Should I tell her to be more entertaining? Maybe juggle a few books while taking a question? So what did I have to offer as an answer. Here it is:
One of the points I make in that piece is that it would be a real challenge to turn a reference or circulation transaction into something more inviting and fun – as you say. I point out it would be a bad idea to throw books to patrons the way the Pike Place Fish Market throws fish.
That said, what we often think of as a mundane transaction could be – if not more memorable – a better contributor to the holistic UX library experience. By that I mean that you want to be thinking about your library experience as a TOTAL experience – of which the reference UX is one part of a larger design for a great library experience. In that piece I describe some of those components – being different, service that inspires loyalty, etc.
In other writings I have discussed how library transactions can focus on being memorable by exceeding user expectations. Have you tried things such as starting transactions by asking the person how their day is going, by introducing yourself, by asking them what their name is and letting them know how much you appreciate them using the library. Do staff remember frequent users and greet them by name? Have you followed up with patrons on occasion to ask them about their experience using the library? Did you let them know that their opinion mattered? All of these things can send a message to the community that the library cares about them and values their use of the library – and that we see each community member than more than just a number on a library card and a transaction. These are the types of actions that help build relationships and loyal library users who tell their friends about the great community library.
As I have stated in other writings and presentations on UX, many individuals do not like coming to the library or have a great fear of research which intimidates them. So they already come to us with low expectations of having a good experience. So anything we can do to make them more at ease, more relaxed, and more aware they have people who are there to help, already exceeds their expectations and contributes to a great and unexpected experience.
But if we just see ourselves as personnel who answer questions, check out books, maintain the stacks – and not as important components in delivering a well designed experience – then it won’t happen. This begins with a staff conversation to figure out what the experience is now – and what it could be and needs to be.
Lisa wrote back to tell me that she found my answer helpful in providing more insight into what I meant by a reference user experience. In fact, she asked me for permission to share it with all of her library colleagues. I was glad to hear that, and I hope that both the article and the follow up sent to Lisa will be at the center of a discussion at the Buckham Memorial Library to begin a conversation about what their desired library experience is and how they will go about designing and implementing it.
