Delving into the Library Shelves

In order to get a full understanding of how and when students interact with the website, I interviewed two subject matter experts (SMEs): the school librarian and the 6th grade history teacher. From these conversations, I learned the librarian carefully curates each page for each grade and that students regularly use the website to learn more about the research process. Additionally, 6th grade students are expected to independently their complete work, but often need the teacher to direct them where to navigate on the website and which sources they should use to complete assessments.

Research Plan:

The history teacher invited me to observe her 6th grade history class as the students were working on completing a research project presentation. From this 49-minute class observation, I created a storyboard to better paint the picture of the environment.

Class Observation:

 Storyboard:

• 1/2 the students had trouble finding resources they needed

• 30% of students faced barriers accessing resources

• Overall, the class did not have a firm understanding of the site’s resources

I found it interesting that the students use the website regularly, yet they still had trouble knowing which resources to use and finding resources they needed. I wanted to explore this as well as learn about other activities students do in their free time to consider incorporating aspects of apps or sites they use. To gain this understanding, I interviewed 5 students from the class.

I created an affinity map to further break down the contexts and details of interviewee responses. This helped me clearly see patterns in the data and show the ‘why’ behind students' actions and habits.

Affinity Map Key Points:

Since students have trouble finding resources, I wanted to further explore why the librarian chose the page’s layout and categories, so I had her complete a card sort. I then compared this data to the website’s analytics to see if the most used links and the librarian’s card sort hierarchy matched one another. According to the website analytics, there are 105 links on the library’s page, 37 of which have never been used this school year. From the comparison, I learned that there were:

• Numerous duplicate links on the page

• Links listed at the top have never been used this school year

• Only 21 links were accessed 10+ times this school year but were scattered throughout the page 

Website’s Analytics:

Outlining Stakeholders' Goals

Since I wanted to design this website for students at this specific middle school, I didn’t want to lose sight of the user demographic I was designing for. I constructed this persona based on interviews and conversations I had with the students.

User Persona:

Pulling from the data, we can see Alex gets frustrated when the teacher expects her to complete certain library website tasks in class because she often needs to ask for guidance. Alex knows she is supposed to use the Kemper Library website because it’s more credible, but she also wants to complete her assignments as quickly as possible.

Having spoken with stakeholders and users, I understood what goals and expectations that each group independently wanted to achieve, as well as, overlapping goals that related across all 3 groups. I created a Business/User/Tech Goals Diagram in order to visualize this concept. Ultimately, the students want to learn, the business benefits from students learning, and the tech wants to ease the process to enhance student learning.

Exploring Solutions to Easily Locate Useful Resources

I started brainstorming with pen and paper, then moved into a digital format to further develop the wireframes. I created 3 low-fidelity wireframe versions of the library website’s home screen.

Key Low- and Mid-Fidelity Wireframes:

Home Screen High Fidelity Wireframe:

Evaluating the New Flows’ Efficiency

In order to test if my flow was effective in assisting students in completing assignments, I tested it on 6 students. All the participants successfully completed the tasks I asked, but I did learn there were some challenges with my design: