Project Overview
The Cooper Union Library serves as a vital resource hub for students, faculty, and researchers across diverse disciplines. With extensive collections of print and digital resources, including archival materials, the library offers access to various resources. It plays a pivotal role in supporting academic pursuits, fostering innovation, and preserving the institution's heritage.
The Cooper Union Library has a partnership with other institutes in New York City, and students can access resources across the partnership libraries, together named the 'Consortium'.
Project Duration: 4 weeks
Team Members:
Shikha (me) (UX Researcher & Designer)
Minh (Data Analyst)
Qiaochu (UX Researcher & Designer)
Pujan (Data Analyst)
Chiu (UX Designer)
My Contribution: Research insights, Data Analysis, User Recruitment, Client communication, User interview, survey design, Designing recommendations, Hi-fidelity mockups, prototyping.
Tools used:
Figma, Tableau, Figjam, Google Form, Google Sheets
Team Members:
Shikha (me) (UX Researcher & Designer)
Minh (Data Analyst)
Qiaochu (UX Researcher & Designer)
Pujan (Data Analyst)
Chiu (UX Designer)
My Contribution: Research insights, Data Analysis, User Recruitment, Client communication, User interview, survey design, Designing recommendations, Hi-fidelity mockups, prototyping.
Tools used:
Figma, Tableau, Figjam, Google Form, Google Sheets
Client Resources:
Client Brief
The Cooper Union Design Brand Guidelines (To integrate visual identity on the website)
PrimoVE back-end engineering system guidelines (To design keeping development constraints in mind)
Client Brief
Project Timeline
1. How we set an appropriate research goal
Client Kick-off Meeting
Meeting with the The Cooper Union library team - Lisa, the Director (for discussing briefs), James, the engineer who works with the Consortium to develop the CDI back-end, and Dave, the lead librarian to completely understand the brand and website system in its entirety.
What we wanted to learn from the meeting, and what we deduced:
This helped us define the project research goal as:
Qualitative Research
What we were attempting to investigate:
- Where in a user's normal everyday flows do they face issues, and why?
- How do users respond to multiple focused points on the website?
- To understand features users use frequently, and where are the missing gaps that could make flows easier?
We decided to move forward with Moderated user research method to gain observational insights into user behavior and response when using the library webpage. For implementing this method we conducted:
User recruitment: Our target audience were Cooper Union undergraduate students. Our recruitment process was:
(a) Sent a Google form for user recruitment to The Cooper Union Library to circulate
(b) Sent social media templates to them to circulate
(C) Physical poster with link to Google Form pinned at the University
(d) Our team sent messages to over 60 students on LinkedIn
(e) Our team visited the Cooper Union school during students' break hours to recruit participants
A screener question of " Which device do you generally use to access the website" was asked for us to prioritize desktop versus mobile studies in our interviews.
After initial lags of lack of user response and reaching out to 75 students, we collected participants over various mediums and conducted live and remote user testing of 15 students collectively.
Interview Script
We deep-dived into potential pain points and important user flows to strategize tasks for the Interview script, with a specific goal in mind (see below)
User Testing
We shared Consent forms to all participants before the interview, and then conducted the study observing them through all tasks we conceptualized.
Research Documentation
We collected our insights detailed for each task for all users to understand recurring problems and patterns
We also conducted a competitive peer analysis to analyze peer University library websites such as NYU, Parsons, Harvard, Columbia regarding affordances, decisions taken and categorized our findings.
We prepared the interview script targeting key goals needed with respect to the project goal.
Quantitative Research
What we were attempting to investigate:
What are participants' expectations from the icons on the Cooper Union library website?
What are participants' understanding of associating certain actions and their icons?
We designed a survey with 13 questions focused on icons on the Cooper Union library website and actions associated with the same. This was circulated amongst students and professionals and we received 35 responses.
Conducting this survey turned out to be very successful for us in understanding how exactly the different icons are viewed, how the text is interpreted, and what actions are expected. It also helped us design strategically to remove these user pain points and validate our findings to the client.
Examples of survey questions are:
Research Data Analysis
We noted down detailed user feedbacks and observations from moderated user interviews for each task. these insights aligned with our research goals, and we also covered unexpected insights in the process
Zooming in...
Qualitative Data Analysis Themes that emerged
Collecting user perspectives about the topics and pages in detail regarding visibility, new feature ideas, navigational pain points, etc, and generating summaries for each page for cohesive research insights.
The survey was distributed across students and professionals with varied digital and library usage.
The survey results gave extremely useful insights into user understanding and expectation of the icons across the Cooper Union design system
Usability Study Design Outcomes
From these collected insights, we have summarized our issues and recommendations
User Testing
We were employing quick user testing goals for the designs to understand the user perception and understandability of the design iterations.
We could gain insights into the designs and used the same for the design changes.
Through the user testing, we had also realized we needed a Featured Collections section from both the users' and the stakeholders' perspective.
User Responses
We were simultaneously editing our prototypes while conducted user testing on our designs. We incorporated feedback like "I wish the Home page looked a little more professional" by tweaking the design systems and reducing application of brand colors.
For the final prototype, we received a very positive feedback across all flows:
Client Deliverables
Client Response
Personal Reflections
My experience and learnings of moderated usability testing process were greatly enhanced by this client project. This project demonstrated to me the real value of user involvement in the design process. I learnt the importance of being mentally present, and asking different in-the-moment questions that arise for each different user according to their specific mental model. I also learnt that for tasks that are dependent on many people, like user recruiting should be planned and started keeping last minute issues in mind. This is my main take-away from this process.
I also learnt the power of efficient team coordination and understanding. Executing this client project with a short deadline was a challenging task, and we could manage it successfully with collaborative planning and work strategy.
What if we had more time...
Given more time, my inclination would have been towards expanding our user testing efforts and integrating client feedback seamlessly. We aspire to deepen our collaboration with the client, potentially involving ourselves in a partial execution of their website. This presents an opportunity for me to further explore the intricacies of design handover for development, adding another layer to my learning journey.
