getting away from widgets: design thinking as a survival tool (niso 2017 webinar)

GETTING AWAY FROM WIDGETSDESIGN THINKING AS A SURVIVAL TOOL

@abhumphreysAlex Humphreys, JSTOR Labs

NISO Webinar: Creating the New Information Product

March 15, 2017

ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization that helps the academiccommunity use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record

and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

Ithaka S+R is a not-for-profit research and consulting service that helps academic, cultural, and publishing communities thrive in the digital environment.

Portico is a not-for-profit preservation service for digital publications, including electronic journals, books, and historical collections.

Artstor provides 2+ million high-quality images and digital asset management software to enhance scholarship and teaching.

JSTOR Labs works with partner publishers, libraries and labs to create tools for researchers, teachers and students that are immediately useful – and a little bit magical.

THE TROUBLEWITH WIDGETS

The word widget is a placeholder name for an object or, more specifically, a mechanical or other manufactured device. It is an abstract unit of production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(economics)

WIDGETS OF CONTENT

• Neat, pre-defined packages of contentex. books, journals

• Publishers competed and libraries/users selected based on what was IN packages

• But it’s not so easy any more…

Great article

s!

Great article

s!

The contents of the containers are still important!

Great article

s!

But pay attention here too, now:

Article Processi

ng Charges

Great article

s!

And here:

The Big Deal

YOU’RE NOT THE ONES SETTING YOUR USERS’ EXPECTATIONS

THESE MAMMOTHS AREN’T *JUST* SETTING USERS’ EXPECTATIONS

WHAT’S A [YOUR NAME HERE]TO DO?

HORIZONS OF INNOVATION

Horizon 1 Horizons 2 & 3• Horizon 1 = core

business

• Innovation usually seeks operational efficiencies

• You know the market, the product, etc.

• You can make reasonable predictions about both cost to develop and how market will react

• Horizons 2 & 3 = new products, new markets & new businesses

• “If you build it, they will come.”

• You don’t even know what “it” is

• Or who “they” are

Horizons framework: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-

of-growthhttp://blog.hypeinnovation.com/using-the-three-horizons-framework-for-innovation

Q: If H2 and H3 are so uncertain, how do you find your way to a sustainable new product or business?

The Design Squiggle, by Damien Newman: http://cargocollective.com/central/The-Design-Squiggle/

A: Lots of short iterations + lots of user feedback = speeding up the learning cycle

Innovation isn’t one big “Eureka,”

it’s a thousand little ones.

REIMAGINING THEMONOGRAPHCan we improve the experience and value of long-form scholarship?

Aug-Sep: User Research

Oct: Workshop

Nov: Build Prototype

Dec: Release Paper/Prototype

USER RESEARCH

WORKSHOP

PROTOTYPING

labs.jstor.org/topicgraph

TOPICGRAPH

Understand at a glance the topics covered in a book.

Jump straight to pages about topics you’re researching.

REIMAGINING THE MONOGRAPH

White paper describing the project, process and principles released as a draft for comment

labs.jstor.org/monograph

www.jstor.org/analyze

AND ONE FOR GOOD MEASURE:Text Analyzer: Use your own document to search for articles and books.

Thank you

Alex HumphreysDirector, JSTOR LabsITHAKAhttp://labs.jstor.org@abhumphreysalex.humphreys@ithaka.org

Further Reading• The Lean Startup, Eric Ries• Business Model Generation &

Value Proposition Design, Osterwalder et al.

• Marty Cagan’s Blog: svpg.com/articles

• Running Lean & Scaling Lean, Ash Maurya

• Sprint, Knapp, Zeratsky, & Kowitz

APPENDIX (OPEN IN CASE OF NO INTERNET CONNECTION)