Examples

Given the short timeframe for this project, stakeholder interviews were not able to be scheduled. Based on talks with Sakaibrary project co-leads and reviewing notes from previous Sakai 3 + Library Web Meetings decisions were made to focus first on a user-centered design around faculty. Open questions are included here for further exploration in a larger design process.

Product vision

A visual representation (sketch, wireframe or mock-up) of a Sakai 3 Library product that serves the needs of faculty and provides the Sakaibrary group and partners a starting point for brainstorming and discussing a longer-term design effort.

Organizational Goals

The product needs to:

• Increase awareness and usage of library services and resources.
• Leverage existing library services and resources, but also propose new integrations and interfaces that will better serve the end user.
• Allow users to seamlessly capture relevant content from the web and other scholarly content management systems (i.e. EndNote).
• Be open, reusable and extensible. Open standards need to be used so that the product is easily reusable and extendible by various institutions.

Technical Constraints and Opportunities

Note on technical constraints: given the short timeframe for this project, early phase of the longer-term design effort and the fundamental shift in technology taking place (both in Sakai 3 and library systems), technical constraints will not be given strong consideration with a focus instead on a product vision based on user needs.

The product needs to:

• Take advantage of the current direction of Sakai 3.
• Leverage existing library systems, but also propose new integrations and interfaces that will better serve the end user.

Four faculty members were interviewed:

Each interview was 30 to 60 minutes long. There was one interaction designer running the interview and taking notes on a laptop. Ideally, two interaction designers should conduct interviews - one to run the interview and one to take detailed notes.

After each interview, the interaction designer went through the notes cleaning them up by making them more readable (to be able to share with others) and adding in details that could not be captured earlier. This process also gave the designer a chance to reflect on the interview and identify emerging themes and new behavioral variables.

To help the designer remember the overall impression of the individual interview, short summary statements were developed describing those characteristics of the user that were particularly salient.

• F01: I'm an intermediate user. I'm comfortable with new learning and research technology, but do not always understand its value for me or enhancing my in-class experience.
• F02: I'm a late adopter. It takes me a long time to learn new technologies and then they change. Once a user, however, I'm enthusiastic and encourage others to convert.
• F03: I feel stuck. Students are demanding more online materials, but the more I put up, the fewer students I see in class. Those who do come are on their laptops emailing or on Facebook.
• F04: I'm a tech enthusiast. CTools is good at lessening my administrative burden, but certain tools do not give me the functionality or usage data I am looking for, so I've commissioned a few of my own online learning tools.

Behavioral Variable Mapping
The Behavioral Variable Mapping allows us to categorize interviewees based on behavior patterns displayed by interviewees. The major behavioral patterns can then be combined with user goals, motivations, frustrations and expectations into user archetypes known as personas.
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Our Personas

Allison is an Ann Arbor local who studied at the University of Michigan and has made her way around the world studying aboriginal languages. She's been teaching at UM for almost a decade now and is always trying to find new ways of taking advantage of the various and always-changing research and teaching tools available to her. Keeping up with technology while balancing students' increasing demands for online material and her own research goals has proven challenging. Allison is relatively tech-savvy, not usually having trouble with information systems she uses, though she does have a feeling there are a lot of features she does not take advantage of. She has trouble with seeing the value in the many tools that are now available to her. She knows that other professors are using the CTools Poll tool, for example, but has no idea why or how it would make for a better learning experience.

Allison also wonders whether the content and tools she is already using are really effective. She added a new journal article to her course this semester and has a feeling that not many students appreciated it. She thought it was great not only because of the content but because it was easily accessible online through the UM Library. Asking students in class whether they found it useful, she did not get much useful feedback.

Allison does know that good images and videos really engage students and get learning across very well. She often finds herself spending hours on Google searching for an image or video for a lecture. She knows the UM Library has some great image collections, but she is not sure how or where to find or search them. She would love it if there were a way to find good multimedia content faster.

Overall, Allison appreciates UM's CTools environment because it really cuts down her administrative burden. She likes the UM Library's services because she's able to create her own custom database sets and search them easily. Because she's not much of an explorer when it comes to technology, she feels there may be some advanced features she doesn't know how to use and ends up doing a lot of manual copying and pasting when dealing with citations she finds through UM's journal article search and needs to use in her syllabus or lecture slides.

Randolph has gone to school on the west coast, on the east coast and has been a professor in the midwest for two decades. A self-proclaimed late adopter, Randolph is not up to date on the latest technological trends. It takes him a fair amount of time to understand how a new technology will add value to his work and significant effort to learn new interfaces. After eventually picking up a new technology and learning how to use it, he is enthusiastic about it and encourages others to join in. Many times, once he's comfortable with a system, a new one comes along which forces him to go through the process of unlearning and relearning all over again.

Randolph also struggles with the perceived drop in student attendance and engagement in class with an increase in placing materials online. He could place attendance rules on his students, but feels as though this treats them like children. Randolph really enjoys teaching and wants to make sure his students take away something valuable from class and that's difficult to do if they don't show up!