PAM Bulletin Vol 40, No 1
- Message from the Chair
- SLA in 2013 is Taking Shape
- Note from the Past Chair
- 2012 PAM Division Board Meeting Minutes
- 2012 PAM Division Business Meeting Minutes
- Astronomy Roundtable: Pioneering the Unknown
- Mathematics Roundtable
- Physics Roundtable
- Vendor Update Summary
- UX for Non-UXers Session Summary
- Publisher Liaisons Report
- Strategic Directions Update
- Membership News
- Member’s Corner
- American Astronomical Society Publications Board Meeting
- APS Subscription Service: Effective Immediately
- PAM Bulletin Sponsor: AIP
by Debra Kolah
Gretchen McNeely, Tilla Edmunds, Thomson Reuters, Debra Kolah, Convener of the SLA UX Caucus, and Mike Corbett shared stories about their UX experiences, and introduced the packed audience to relevant terms in UX, information architecture (IA) and service design; elements of design thinking that play into UX discussions; areas where content strategy, IA and UX intersect; the challenges addressed by effective experience design; and simple ways to assess the current user experience in your information environment.
McNeely believes usability assessments, metrics and findings are “tools in the toolkit” that ultimately help us design and enhance the overall user experience. You don’t need to be a usability expert to contribute in the UX world but concrete aspects of usability serve as a crucial component of the way people interact with brands.
Edmunds, spoke about the collaborative efforts of developing the new EndNote iPad app and the importance of understanding who your users are by using personas, and knowing age, role, problems, tasks, and goals. For the iPad app, context of use was very important, and they involved users by include them at every stage of development.
Kolah spoke about an iPad project that is driven by questions around: Are our users going to use our ebooks? Do our users want us to buy more econtent? Are our users struggling with our existing mobile resources? She laid a foundation of ethnographic work in libraries by talking about Nancy Foster from the University of Rochester and Andrew Asher from the ERIAL Project (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries.) Also, work by anthropologists like Sharon Traweek (Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The world of High Energy Physicists 1989) can be very important to librarians. The UX iPad study will inform the way we provide ebooks, and mobile library information. Kolah blogs at: http://www.effervescentlibrarian.wordpress.com
Mike Corbett gave an excellent student perspective of usability testing Library Explorer on a Microsoft Surface table at Brown University and Harvard. The presentation is available at the Harvard Library UX site.
MODERATOR:
Stella Ota, Stanford University
SPEAKERS:
Debra Kolah, Rice University; Mike Corbett, Simmons College; Gretchen McNeely, Self-Employed; Tilla Edmunds,Thomson Reuters
