2016 Charleston Library Conference

Creating a good user experience for our end users (students, researchers, etc.) is important to librarians, publishers, and other vendors in academic publishing; we want the content and products we provide to be used and useful. Site redesigns are a great opportunity to better address user needs because of all the information we have about how people are actually using a site, what people find confusing, and what goals aren't being accomplished.

This session will discuss user research in site redesigns and include case studies of using user research to better meet user needs. These will include the Indiana University Libraries' homepage redesign and the SAGE Research Methods redesign. Speakers will share:
 

• The research undertaken and key findings, including a range of techniques for user research and applying user centered design principles 
• The top challenges the teams were hoping to solve with the redesigns
• The new design and how it responded to the challenges
• After launch - What seems to have worked and not worked 

Attendees will leave the session with several examples of user research and ways to make their next redesign project more user-centered. Presenters will also share key outcomes from their research that are applicable across different sites and products.