library users, to see if you are on the right track before any money is spent. Only if a prototype is valuable to users should it then receive investment. UX work is also therefore hugely economical as well as evidence-based.
IP – What type of things should you be thinking about when considering UX in libraries – where is your starting point and when should you start? Is it better to think of it as a journey or focus on the outcome? AP – What I’d say is stop considering and planning for UX work and in the words of Nike ‘Just Do It!’. Library staff need to interact with their users far more than they currently do and UX is the perfect toolkit to reconnect you with them: helping you find out what they actually do and need. We need to stop guessing and assuming what they want and get out of our back offices and source the answers which are right there waiting for us in our physical and digital library spaces. It’s simply about interacting with and observing your users. The best way to start is to try out a few of the methods, taking baby steps at first, and then after gaining some insights into user thoughts and behaviours, creating and testing something new as a result. If you’ve never tried UX methods before I can promise you that it’s a journey on which you will learn more about your users than you have ever done during the rest of your library career.
IP – If users are a shifting demographic, with shifting needs how do we ensure UX work is embedded in a service’s thinking and approach, but is not an all- consuming process? AP – It’s precisely because there’s a shifting demographic – and an ever- shifting type of library use – that we should be regularly using UX methods to research user needs and behaviours and designing in response. But UX should not take up too much time, or become a big project, it should be a mindset. We should more frequently ask ourselves: ‘Did we ask our users what they thought?’; ‘Did we test to see if our users engaged with it, before we spent hundreds of pounds?’ We need to get into the habit of going out and gathering insights from users that support our ideas, or not, and pay much less attention to our guesswork and assumptions. As I always say: “Go and find out!” I’d like to add that UX is not about proving things statistically. We get far too hung up on numbers and can move much faster and smarter by quickly gathering user insights that you can test. When you conduct UX design and test prototypes on users you effectively scale up and find out what a lot more users think, but you should start small. What tends to happen in libraries is that far too much user data is gathered initially, staff
22 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL Paper prototypes.
get overwhelmed, and then do nothing with it, or they just write a report. Taking tangible physical action and testing is a core part of UX work.
IP – When should you conduct UX work. Is there an ideal time? AP – UX work should be regularly conducted before changes are made or new services are developed. Ideally, it should just become part of your day- to-day processes and embedded as a strategic priority, as it already is in many Nordic libraries. I also believe that UX can and should be conducted at any time. We
worry too much about disturbing our users, when in fact we are actively helping them by researching and thereby delivering more user-centric services. Every single time I deliver UX training, library staff attendees are completely surprised by the fact that 99 per cent of users are happy to help and surprised and pleased to be asked.
IP – How do you develop a robust research framework that helps you capture user needs and behaviours? AP – I advocate that we should be following the ‘Double Diamond’ model devised by the Design Council. It is a tried-and-tested process – myself and many others call it ‘The UX Process’ – which ensures you move from research, to data analysis, to ideation, to prototyping. It’s a process that really does work, keeps the user at the centre, and should therefore be trusted. This year’s UX in Libraries conference in Liverpool has the theme ‘Trust the Process’ for this very reason.
Paper prototypes: music room.
IP – Will UX Research and Design work fit with your organisation’s overall aims and priorities? AP – UX work is ALWAYS relevant to your organisation’s objectives, because it’s all about ensuring your users are getting what they need from your services, making them more useful, usable and
Summer 2025
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