UX Toolkit

This is a set of resources to help you understand why, when and how to use User Experience (UX) techniques as part of your project or service. The focus is on the UX of spaces and services rather than online platforms (although we may add that part in later), and although the Toolkit was created within Information Services it's applicable to any Department who want to better understand their users.

UX is for everyone. You don't need to be part of the UX Group or a senior member of staff to use these techniques; if you're interested in real insights into a demographic or audience and you have the time to undertake a project, we can't recommend ethnography and UX highly enough.

You don’t need to read the whole of this Toolkit at once, just dip into it as needed; we would recommend at least reading the whole of this page and the all of the Ethnographic Techniques sections before you get started, however… 

You can find out who participates in the Information Services UX Group at the relevant page. There’s at least one member from each section of the Library (Collections, Customer Services and Relationship Management) so you can always speak to us to learn more about integrating UX into your work. 

Traditionally the term UX, or User eXperience, has been used to refer to usability in an online environment. However this is not primarily how we're using it in this context: UX is an umbrella term to describe a suite of techniques based around first understanding and then improving the experiences people have when using our library services. It utilises ethnography and design to achieve this.

Have a look at this presentation for a broader introduction, with examples of some methods and techniques.

The short answer is any time you want to better understand our users. 

In reality, it’s a little more complicated than that, because UX is a messy and sometimes time-consuming business. For example, if you’re going to commit to spending 5 hours doing ethnographic fieldwork, that may well take a further 20 hours to write-up, analyse, process, and create recommendations and ultimately design changes to a service or system. That 4:1 ratio of analysis to fieldwork means the time soon mounts up. 

Most of the time, you gain so much insight from UX work that it is worth it - but it’s not always practical to spend so much time in one area. Make sure you have the time in your calendar to see it through (and, if applicable, agreement from your line-manager). Consider whether existing sources of data would provide you with what you need - for example, survey data from the NSS or Library Surveys, or even the findings from previous UX projects.

Glad you asked. Here’s a checklist, assuming you already have a chosen a demographic, or space, or service, as the focus for your piece of work.  

1. Consider if UX is the right research method

2. If it is, read up on the various ethnographic techniques and choose which ones might be suitable for the project. You wouldn’t expect to use all of them for every UX project, - usually two or three methods are sufficient.

3. Speak to a member of the UX group for advice and ideas 

4. Check with your manager to make sure you have the time necessary to undertake the work 

5. At this stage you need to start thinking about ethics and consent. There are Consent Forms you can adapt and use, and it’s essential that every participant in UX fieldwork gives informed consent for all their input. 

6. Read some of the previous reports, presentations and other outputs from projects we’ve done using UX (link coming soon!) to get some more context 

7. Get hold of any other relevant data that will help - for example, online surveys, face-to-face questionnaires, previous UX research. It may be that we already have insight into the area you want to know about...

8. Start your project! At this stage you may want to look at the ESG Project Toolkit.

The typical UX Research cycle will usually follow the follow pattern of actions:

1. Recruit participants for your fieldwork
2. Undertake the ethnographic fieldwork
3. Analyse the results
4. Design tweaks, changes, improvements or perhaps even entirely new spaces / services, based on the results.
5. Implement changes to your services and spaces. Aim to make changes as you go along, rather than waiting until the end to launch wholesale changes all at once. See the Prototyping section of the toolkit for more information on this.
6. Bonus step: If you really want to do UX right, now go back to the fieldwork stage! Evaluate the changes you’ve made, recruiting new participants if necessary. You may then need to make further design changes too - the idea is to keep developing what you’ve done, to improve the users’ experiences

UX research by its nature is an ethnographic form of research in which the researcher seeks to understand users’ experience and manner of engagement with a particular environment from the user's perspective: preferably while the user is still engaged within the environment.

A printable version of the image above (with text) is also available.