ILS website research PT 1: Internal staff & faculty interviews

Definitions

• UX: User Experience
• Figma: A design platform where we create all of our designs.
• FigJam: A digital whiteboard platform linked to Figma and our design files.
• Jira: A KanBan-like platform we use to organize our work following an agile workflow.
• Sprint: A period of work focusing on previously outlined tasks.

Introduction

Each month, we conduct research on a part of the MSUL website. In the summer of 2024, we were asked by the InterLibrary Services (ILS) unit to conduct research on the usability of their set of pages that start with lib.msu.edu/ils. They were interested in how we could improve the layout and functionality of the pages to better serve the community it is meant for. We determined that the best course of action for this research was to conduct two sets of interviews, one with patrons who use ILS and one with MSUL internal staff and faculty who use ILS or work closely with the department but are not part of the unit. This post describes the processes and findings of our interviews with MSUL internal faculty and staff.

Process

Initial information gathering

We met with ILS leaders and discussed the pain points they saw from their point of view. From that discussion, we were able to create a list of questions to guide us through the research process. These included:

• How does our Information Literacy team teach/talk about ILS?
• How do reference staff refer patrons to the ILS site?
• Does our staff believe the services on the site are adequately explained? Do they need interpretation from one of our reference staff to users?
• What do librarians like/dislike when directing users to the site?
• Could information on policies and services be clearer on the site? Are our staff familiar with these?
• How should the site work in conjunction with other library services?

Interview questions

This initial list of inquiries helped us create our interview questions, and we first focused on internal MSUL staff and faculty who work with the ILS unit or website. As a team we came up with the following questions that are tailored to uncover information without imposing any bias on the participant.

1. In your own words, what do you think ILS is/does?
2. How does your unit work with ILS?
3. What questions do you get the most about ILS?
4. [Show lib.msu.edu/ils] How familiar are you with lib.msu.edu/ils?
5. What resources have been helpful on the ILS website?
6. How do you use the ILS website?
7. How often do you refer patrons to the ILS site?
8. What ILS services do you get the most questions on, if any?
9. How useful is the ILS site as a resource for finding information/answers?
   1. To you?
   2. To patrons?
10. Do you believe your colleagues and Library staff understand the services on the site?
11. How familiar are you with ILS’s policies and services?
    1. Is the information on policies and services about ILS clear on the site?
    2. How could they be improved?
    3. How informative are the FAQ’s on the website?
12. How well do you interpret the terminology on the ILS site? (ILL, ILS, UBorrow, WorldCat, ILLiad, Article Delivery, Distance Delivery Service, Get it @ MSU)
    1. How well do you think our patrons interpret the terminology on the ILS site?
13. How does the infolit team teach or talk about ILS?
14. Any more thoughts about ILS

Recruitment & participants

Knowing that we wanted to interview MSUL staff who work with ILS, we reached out to staff members in Discovery Services, Circulation, Information Literacy, and Reference. We interviewed ten people in total over a span of two weeks in June 2024.

Interviews & notetaking

All of our interviewees participated via video call (zoom). We delegated interviews across our UX team of five (four full-time UX staff members and one student intern), striving to have one interview moderator and two note takers for each session. The moderator led the meeting and asked the interview questions and other follow up questions, while the note takers took notes on the participants’ responses in a Google doc. Interviews took an average of 45 minutes each.

Affinity mapping

After conducting all interviews with staff, we translated all of our notes into one affinity map using Figjam. Responses and context were written on individual “sticky notes” and grouped by similarity. This allowed us to see patterns and themes across all of our participants’ responses. We identified ten large themes that the responses related to: service knowledge, terminology, unit interaction, navigation, hierarchy & content, Illiad, FAQs, “Get it” language & button, process, and policies.

Problem identification & brainstorming solutions

From each of these themes, we identified the main pain points or findings that our sticky notes described. We found a total of 21 findings needing solutions, including that of unclear terminology and language, lack of patron knowledge of the services the unit provides, confusion around policies, and issues with the Illiad platform.

From here, we asynchronously brainstormed solutions for each problem, to see what each of us would come up with on our own. We discussed all solutions proposed, and marked the most feasible or promising options.

Reporting findings and proposed solutions to ILS

This synthesis of data was completed in August 2024. A report was written detailing our findings and proposed solutions, and in October 2024 our UX team discussed this report with the ILS team.

Next steps

Many of the findings from this set of interviews included observations and assumptions about how patrons use ILS (services or website). Before we implement the solutions addressing these findings, we will interview patrons in this community and cross check the new data with our previous report.

Once we have solid data to back up our proposed solutions, we will make tickets in our Jira board to work on these improvements in a logical order. Each improvement will be tested with users for a final check that we are making optimal changes.