NYPL: Access to Resources
Researching ways to improve NYPL’s services in aiding and meeting researcher’s goals
Team
Yeatasmin, Esha, Roey
Tools:
Figma, Google Suite, Miro
Timeline:
16 weeks
Role:
UX Research, Ethnographic Study, UX Strategy
overview
The NYPL (New York Public Library) was looking to identify the needs and challenges researchers face at various stages of conducting research and accessing their resources. As a UX Consultant for Pratt’s Center for Digital Experiences, my team and I were approached to work with NYPL to to understand the user experience of researchers with the library’s services and resources both online and in-person. Through ethnographic studies, interviews, workshops, and user testing, we created prototypes with 3 recommendations to improve the learning experience.
1 Researchers rely heavily on digital infrastructures to conduct research
2 When exploring NYPL’s online system, participants ran into several pain points that made the process of accessing resources confusing and difficult
3 Discoverability, accessibility, and readability were the main focus for our design recommendations
goals
This study aims to evaluate how researchers/non-researchers utilize current New York Public Library’s online and offline resources during their research process/daily life.
the process
users
research
Based on our client brief, we identified our target users as the following:
researchers
user with the “intention to find authoritative material”
experience not needed to be considered a researcher
The first step in our exploratory study was to conduct an on-site observation at one of NYPL’s branches. We chose one of the more well-known locations in Bryant Park, specifically the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Pairing that with interviews with a librarian and researchers with different academic and applied research backgrounds, we were able to further understand their perspective on research and access to resources within NYPL.
Researchers’ individual work is best supported by environments that foster deep focus and allow them to work in solitude
Researchers have a heavy reliance on digital infrastructures to conduct, gather, and organize research
“We are the research library for the unaffiliated”
Dot voting Pain Points
Filtering
Accessing resources and materials
Research support
Despite the search bar being the most frequently used feature on the NYPL website, researchers are unable to recognize its full potential
Researchers (especially amateur researchers) experience navigational issues which hinder them from discovering content and conducting research in a convenient way
Researchers experience several issues while accessing research material via the NYPL website
Afterwards, we conducted a workshop with the same researcher participants with a dot voting and forced ranking activity. This gave us further knowledge of their pain points and priorities, which aided in creating a user profile and journey to reflect our target user.
Forced Ranking High Priority
Filtering
Accessing resources and materials
Research support
themes + opportunities
With the supporting research and studies we conducted, we landed on three themes that emerged, and brainstormed opportunities to solve them.
1 Discoverability
Researchers struggle using the search feature on the NYPL website to its full potential.
Researchers experience limitations using filters to locate research material
opportunities:
Improving the search by introducing visually appealing UI components
Including advanced search and filters along with a citation tool from the start to avoid multiple steps
New users can be presented with a pop-up tutorial for leveraging NYPL web services to their best interests.
Potential to conduct a user study focused on filters to introduce more research role and field specific filters
