Affinity map showing sticky notes from research.
Type
Research
Status
Current
Timeline
Summer 2024 - Fall 2025
Project Contributors
  • Austin Deneau
  • Sruthin Gaddam
  • Shelby Kroske
  • Marochelle Moreno
  • Shel Vilag

InterLibrary Services Website Research & Redesign

Definitions

ILS/InterLibrary Services: MSU Libraries unit that borrows materials from other libraries, lends material to other libraries, and delivers materials to MSU affiliates.

ILL/InterLibrary Loan: Service that allows the ability to borrow materials held by other libraries.

User journey map: A visual representation of the journey a person takes to accomplish a goal.

Affinity map: A diagram activity that is used to organize and categorize information.

Figma: An interface design platform where we create all of our mockups.

Figjam: A digital whiteboard platform linked to Figma and our design files.

Jira: A KanBan-like project management platform we use to organize our work following an agile workflow.

Project Description

At its core, InterLibrary Services (ILS) offers options for the MSU community to borrow items from other institutions. The current ILS website can be confusing for those who interact with it. We are working to redesign the ILS website to reduce areas of confusion, clarify what ILS can do for library patrons, and make it easier for them to use ILS services.

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?

Phase 1

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. 

Crafting 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.

Sample Interview Questions for MSUL Staff Working Closely with ILS
  1. How does your unit work with ILS?
  2. What questions do you get the most about ILS?
  3. [Show lib.msu.edu/ils] How familiar are you with lib.msu.edu/ils?
  4. What resources have been helpful on the ILS website?
  5. How do you use the ILS website?
  6. What ILS services do you get the most questions on, if any?
  7. How useful is the ILS site as a resource for finding information/answers?
    1. To you?
    2. To patrons?

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.

Affinity map of sticky notes showing our notes from the interviews

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.

Table showing the category, finding, and possible solutions to the finding, with stars indicating solutions we thought were most viable.

Our Initial Report

This synthesis of data was completed in August 2024. An initial 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 (the services or website). Before we implement the solutions addressing these findings, needed to understand the experience from an ILS patron’s perspective. 

Phase 2

Turning our focus to students, community members, faculty, and staff and how they interact with the ILS website, we began another round of user experience research. 

Recruitment & participants

This time when recruiting, we referenced our list of people who had volunteered to participate in UX research via the WebUX website. We also reached out to the Peer Research Assistant program coordinator, Emilia Marcyk, and faculty at the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities with information to share with those interested in participating. Lastly, we contacted patrons who had a history of ILS usage. Interested parties used a sign up sheet to indicate their preferred time slot as well as whether or not they were familiar with ILS.

We faced challenges in recruiting and scheduling as we were conducting this research during December 2024 and January 2025. In total, we were able to interview nine people over the course of two months. 

Interview Questions

Our second phase of interviews included three short parts in one interview: contextual questions, a usability test on the current ILS site, and a request for the interviewee to show us their workflow when conducting research and searches using the ILS site. Additionally, two scripts were used - one for interviewees who indicated they were familiar with ILS, and one for those indicating they were not familiar with ILS. These two scripts were very similar, but had key differences to help us gather pertinent information.

Sample Interview Questions
  1. How would you prefer to be informed of the ILS processes?
  2. Does “Get it” or “Get it @ MSU” mean anything to you?
Sample Patron Workflow Question
  1. Please show us your typical workflow for requesting materials through ILS.
Sample Usability Test Task
  1. [Participant starts on lib.msu.edu] You need a good book to read over the fall/winter/etc. break and you narrowed it down to “Where the Crawdads Sing”. Find the book and show us how you would go about checking it out.

Synthesizing Data

After the interviews were completed, we created another affinity map using this new data. We then compared the pain points  and findings from this round of interviews with that of the first round of interviews, and updated our original report to reflect what was validated in these findings. 

Our Findings

  • Content
    • It is not clear where the user should go on the site to see loan items from other institutions
    • ILS landing page is not efficiently leading users to needed information
  • FAQs
    • Accordion style display of the FAQ makes it hard to access the contents.
    • The organization and order of the FAQs is not clear
  • Get it Button
    • The term “Get It” is not clear.
  • Illiad
    • Illiad is among the most used feature but does not stand out enough in the sidebar.
    • Terminology is not explained/understood well.
    • Illiad content is not easy to navigate; tracking status is not easily found by patrons.
  • Navigation
    • There is confusion between ILL and ILS and what those mean.
    • “ILS” and “InterLibrary Services” is unclear, especially on gray tab and in the main navigation of the library site
    • Patrons are using search to find the ILS pages.
  • Policies
    • It is unclear what policies apply to who and to what situations.
    • Users wish to have a longer timeframe to be on the waitlist for materials, especially obscure materials.
  • Process
    • Patrons perhaps don’t know what they are looking at when it comes to Illiad account
    • Patrons don’t know what to expect of the ILL/ILS process. It is not clearly displayed on the site.
    • Accessing Illiad requests is a challenge.
    • Patrons have a use for additional helpful fields in the ILS request forms, such as whether or not they would accept an electronic copy of the material over a physical copy.
  • Service Knowledge
    • Patrons aren’t aware that ILS exists or the services they offer.
    • Staff is sometimes unsure what services ILS offers or the processes.
  • Unclear Terminology
    • Patrons do not understand terminology surrounding ILS, including the ILS abbreviation, UBorrow, and WorldCat.
  • Unit Interaction
    • Staff cannot see what is on the patron’s ILLiad account to answer questions.
    • Hard for staff to efficiently describe steps to get to and use ILS over phone and chat.
  • WorldCat
    • Users have difficulty finding access to WorldCat

Next steps

With goals created from these findings, we have started to make tickets in our project management system 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.