Terminology for Finding Librarian Help: UX Paper Prototype Testing

U T A with star in the center, used when staff photo is unavailable

by Leni Matthews
September 7 2017

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The Question

Designing "seek librarian assistance" concepts into the UTA Library homepage with librarian's terms.

    Two questions were posed to students:

    • Q1: When looking for help from a librarian for information related to your major, what link would you choose?
    • Q2: When looking for help from a librarian for information outside you major, what link would you choose?

    Terms Proposed by Librarians

    • Librarians by Academic Subject
    • Librarians by Expertise
    • Librarians by Academic Discipline
    • Librarians by Area of Expertise
    • Librarians by Specialty
    • Areas of Expertise
    • Assistance by Expertise
    • Librarians by Subject (current)
    Sample of top of Libraries' website

    Purpose

    Two usability studies were run to validate terminology from librarians for the libraries homepage.  In both studies, each student was presented with paper mockups of the homepage ans asked to find information using different search goals.

    Image removed.In Study 1, the terms were located on the right side of the screen.  A search was scored as a "hit" if the student pointed to one of the proposed terms and a "miss" if not.  Most searches were hits.  Of these, 86% were "Librarians by Academic Subject" for Q1.  None of the terms was prominent for Q2.

    Students did not choose a substantial number of terms from librarians.  For Q1, these included Thesis and Dissertation Info, Research by Subject, Ask Us, and Librarian Instruction.  For Q2, the included Ask Us, FAQ, Research Commons, and FabLab.

     

    Two questions emerged.  Did students miss because the terms did not resonate with them?  Or did they miss because they never searched the right side of the page?

    Image removed.To examine weather if Study 1 was tied to the location of information, we switched the terms from the right to the left side of the page.  If  misses were simply due to the search failure, then shifting the terms to the left side should have result in fewer misses.  Instead, the misses increased (and hits decreased).  Therefore, placing the terms on the right side is a good design decision.  Unfortunately, the data do not address the mismatch between the librarian-generated terms and student knowledge or expectations about librarians' roles for helping them in their search goals.

    Recommendations

    The terms are not intuitive.  We are losing +21% of students when it comes to finding librarian help.

    • Place Terms on the right side.
    • use Librarians by Academic Subject instead of Librarians by Subject
    • Do more research about student search strategies relating to seeking librarian help.  We want -5% misses.

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