bottoms up: building a service on a solid foundation of user needs
TRANSCRIPT
Bethan Ruddock @bethanar
Bottoms up! Building a service on a solid foundation of user needs
CC image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/wackystuff/8169312124/
In the beginning
Library Impact Data Project (LIDP) https://library3.hud.ac.uk/blogs/lidp/ Discovered a correlation – not causation – between use of library resources and attainment.
But their data processing wasn’t scalable or sustainable
“Ellen, three months, and a lot of spreadsheets”
Jisc Library Analytics and Metrics Project, run with Mimas and the University of
Huddersfield
The Jisc Library Analytics and Metrics Project set out to produce a dashboard which would meet a proven need: to allow more libraries to analyse more data to answer more questions
User centred design
An iterative approach
Lo fi prototypes
We knew that the project needed to be based on
Simple iterative feedback cycle
Analysis
Design
Evaluation
Community Advisory and Planning group
The CAP was involved at every stage of the project. Made up of representatives from a variety of UK HE libraries, in a variety of roles, we wanted to get a group that was as representative as possible of the LAMP user base
Areas of project development
»Environment and context
»Use cases/stories/questions to be answered
»Interface »Database
The project areas were roughly mapped to Jesse James Garrett’s ‘simple planes’ principle of web design http://jjg.net/elements
Areas of project development
»Environment and context
»Use cases/stories/questions to be answered
»Interface »Database
Pre-mortem
A pre-mortem takes the premise that the project has failed, and asks the group to consider why. It was especially valuable ding this with the CAP, as we gained an understanding of what failure would look like from a user perspective – this can be very different from failure from a developer’s/project leader’s perspective
Areas of project development
»Environment and context
»Use cases/stories/questions to be answered
»Interface »Database
Epic: strategy
Collected by one-to-one interviews, refined through group work
Macro: use cases
Micro: job stories
When...
I want to...
So I can...
http://alanklement.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/replacing-user-story-with-job-story.html
We refined these epic and macro use cases down to job stories, based on the ‘jobs to be done’ principle. This asks users to create a specific, concrete task:
This takes your design out of the abstract ‘I would like to…’ and into ‘this is what I do’, and we used these job stories as the basis for future development.
Areas of project development
»Environment and context
»Use cases/stories/questions to be answered
»Interface »Database
Gut test
20 dashboards/interfaces
20 seconds eachRate them 1-5
Comment on why
Wireframes 1
Rough, hand-drawn wireframes for our first paper prototype. The roughness encourages feedback: users can be reluctant to critique something which looks ‘finished’
Design critique
http://scottberkun.com/essays/23-how-to-run-a-design-critique/
Structured, facilitated feedback on specific elements of a design
Looking for specific outcomes
Small number (3-4) of questions
Small number (5-6) of examples
Small (5-6), focused group of participants
Workflows and 'active' wireframe
We used these design critiques to move through rounds of paper prototypes to ‘active’ prototype, built using InVision. We developed a step-by-step workflow for some of the job stories, and then wireframed out each step. These were then presented on a screen for users to click through. There was no data behind them, but it allowed users to get an idea of how a workflow could feel.
Areas of project development
»Environment and context
»Use cases/stories/questions to be answered
»Interface »Database
Real data, real problems
We got data in from users before starting to design the database. This allowed us to take into accounts the constraints of the data.
Data structure
We knew that the decisions we made about database structure would affect how the data could be used, and so consulted the CAP about decisions such as how to normalise data
API (the 'dirty prototype)
The database fed into a working prototype. There were no constraints on how the data could be used, and the design work hadn’t been implemented, but the data could be queried and return results.
Jisc: effective learning analytics
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/effective-learning-analyticshttps://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ANALYTICS
In summer 2014, Mimas transitioned to become part of Jisc, and work was done internally to consolidate projects and reduce any duplication. It was decided that Library Analytics and Learning Analytics would work very well together. Advantages for LAMP included access to new datasets (such as HESA and NSS data), and tools to transform and query the data. Advantages for Learning Analytics included access to the user research and user-centred design work that had been done for LAMP.
Tableau
The Learning Analytics team had procured Tableau for data dashboards. This didn’t mean that the work done on the LAMP dashboard design had been wasted: the insights into how users would respond to dashboard design were valuable for determining that Tableau would be a valid dashboard choice for LAMP.
screenshot of the 'post-its' page
The Analytics team took the top-priority job stories, and worked to determine which datasets could be used to answer these questions, and to start building these in Tableau.
The Learning and Library Analytics packages are currently going through various development work, alpha and beta testing.
Why user-centred design?
“Ultimately, the project needs to understand who is this decision making tool for? This audience may expand and morph as the project develops, but it needs to ensure it doesn’t fail its primary audience(s) by trying to serve the needs of everyone.”
Ben Showers, http://jisclamp.mimas.ac.uk/2013/05/02/community-
advisory-and-planning-group-meeting-notes/
Find out more…
Bethan RuddockContent development & project manager, Digital Resources
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND